{"id":22351,"date":"2020-03-21T10:21:14","date_gmt":"2020-03-21T14:21:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=22351"},"modified":"2020-03-21T10:27:09","modified_gmt":"2020-03-21T14:27:09","slug":"weekend-music-break-dark-and-ry-xs-thunder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2020\/03\/weekend-music-break-dark-and-ry-xs-thunder\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekend Music Break: <em>Dark<\/em>, and Ry X&#8217;s &#8220;Thunder&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"intrinsic-container intrinsic-container-16x9\"><figure><figure><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/wdXuSWmPkDs\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/figure><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"smalltext\"><em>[Video\/audio: montage from S2E2 of the Netflix series, <\/em>Dark<em>]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap\">The German television series <em>Dark<\/em> is that, and then some: not really a cultural experience to indulge in when you need cheering up, unless you (as I do) revel in the intricacies of a story&#8217;s plot and character aside from its &#8220;subject.&#8221; Here&#8217;s the capsule description from Wikipedia, to save you a trip there:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>Set in a fictionalized version of the town of Winden, Germany, <em>Dark<\/em> concerns the aftermath of a child&#8217;s disappearance which exposes the secrets of, and hidden connections among, four estranged families as they slowly unravel a sinister time travel conspiracy which spans three generations. Throughout the series, <em>Dark<\/em> explores the existential implications of time and its effects upon human nature.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Yes, time travel &#8212; in that sense, I guess, you could think of <em>Dark<\/em> as a science-fiction series. But the &#8220;science&#8221; is almost incidental, consisting (like so much time-travel SF) of a certain amount of hand-waving; it centers around a mysterious, mysteriously <em>portable<\/em> steampunky machine invented, and refined, and re-refined over the course of decades&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(That&#8217;s one of the ingenious time-travel gimmicks, as it turns out: all that tinkering with the machine occurs and then <em>re-<\/em>occurs, iteratively: if it needs to be &#8220;better&#8221; &#8212; fine-tuned somehow &#8212; then because it&#8217;s portable, one of the characters can simply take it back to an earlier year to be improved, over and over, <em>as long as it takes<\/em>&#8230; because &#8220;as long as it takes&#8221; to get the machine just right is compressed into just a few decades of nominally real calendar time.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I don&#8217;t want to talk too much about <em>Dark<\/em>, per se, because you may be curious enough to turn to Netflix and dive into the series yourself; one of its (dark) pleasures is the pleasure of tugging at all the knots of paradox on your own, unassisted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But I will say that it could have almost no other title than <em>Dark<\/em>. Most of the action doesn&#8217;t take place at night, but it <em>does<\/em> take place in setting after setting of subdued lighting. I&#8217;m not sure I remember an episode in which the sun shone, even a little. (I&#8217;m a little over halfway through Season 2; Season 3 is scheduled for release this June.) In fact, regarding the weather, I have to say that the series sure doesn&#8217;t represent much at all of a love letter to the wooded German landscape it shows &#8212; anymore than do classic Grimm-style tales of witches and monsters which lurk in the same surroundings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The soundtrack, too, is haunted. Like many people, I often obsess over earworm songs to which I&#8217;ve been introduced &#8212; or of which I&#8217;ve been reminded &#8212; by television series and films. But these songs are generally, y&#8217;know, <em>catchy<\/em>: upbeat, bouncy, rhythm-driven things. In <em>Dark<\/em>, by contrast, the earworms by themselves are almost trance-inducing. And they blend so well sonically with the visual foreground that you can almost forget they exist&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8230;until one comes along like this one: &#8220;Thunder,&#8221; by an Australian performer known professionally as Ry X.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap\">The <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"lyrics (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/genius.com\/Ry-x-thunder-annotated\" target=\"_blank\">lyrics<\/a> (especially in the closing refrain) have <em>nothing<\/em> to do with what&#8217;s taking place onscreen at the time. Rather, taken on their own terms, they paint a picture of some mysterious love gone wrong, of bitter disappointment with the course of romantic (and counter-romantic) events. But if you&#8217;ve been following the series, and you encounter the song during this scene towards the end of Season 2&#8217;s second episode, you may find in &#8220;Thunder&#8217;s&#8221; words many echoes of what you&#8217;ve seen so far, and in the montage onscreen at the moment: contrasts between the awful present and even a recent sacred past, cataclysms occurring under the skin, and expressions &#8212; relentless, hammered in, real and figurative &#8212; of the number 2&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was so happy to find that someone had posted the entire montage on YouTube. (&#8220;Officially,&#8221; the videos which associate the song with the series feature clips from the episode, but not the exact sequence over which the song plays during the episode.) I have no idea if you will appreciate it quite so much, but the song has been playing over and over in my mind for a month now (it came in the door like thunder, laid me down in wonder, shook the walls like thunder), and it&#8217;s about time I wrote about it&#8230; and, perhaps, relegated it to my past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>[Aside: and yes, it&#8217;s probably true that the series and the song speak to the present moment in what passes for the &#8220;real&#8221; world.]<\/em> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Video\/audio: montage from S2E2 of the Netflix series, Dark] The German television series Dark is that, and then some: not really a cultural experience to indulge in when you need cheering up, unless you (as I do) revel in the intricacies of a story&#8217;s plot and character aside from its &#8220;subject.&#8221; Here&#8217;s the capsule description [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22356,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[183,3286,2252,74,196,3460],"tags":[2323,5093,5094],"class_list":{"0":"post-22351","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-everyday-life","8":"category-obsessions","9":"category-midweek-music-break","10":"category-music","11":"category-television","12":"category-science-fiction-06_writing","13":"tag-earworms","14":"tag-ry-x","15":"tag-soundtracks","16":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/dark-1.jpg?fit=659%2C291&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-5Ov","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22351"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22355,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22351\/revisions\/22355"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}