Perceptions of Reality in Zootopia

[Alisaura]

Pretentious and overstated title aside (which I just made up), I wrote this at the beginning of September (the 2nd actually), as the forum was really hotting up... I was a bit overwhelmed, and I'm feeling this way again now, hence my semi- & temporary forum-abandonment... I didn't want to put this up then cos it was so long, undisciplined and random (and crap)... I've tried to tighten it up but it won't cos that's how my brain was (and is). Seemed like as good a time as any to air it after all...
So without any further ado (darn I love that word).....

Is it Real?
How long have I waited? (How long, how long...)
Everyone's talking, I have to listen
My mind is saturated
With rumours and hints and teases and leaked information
the excitement of others
better informed than I.

Finally I drag myself away from the fount of data
And retreat into the known from the unknown.
Yet here too is excitement!
I share the waiting with everyone else
But here I'm also discovering new in the old.
It assaults me from all sides;
A global agony of anticipation,
giga-megabytes of it before my bloodshot eyes
Yet maybe for me it's not so bad.
I hear decades-old songs for the first time,
even as I snatch snippets of something yet unborn.
Rejoicing in the novelty of the old,
Learning to love it,
All the while waiting.
I fill up the days and the weeks with absorbing their lives,
Every picture, every interveiw, every quote,
Discovering, learning, waiting, talking
Overload! (I feel Numb...)
Is it real? Are they real? (What IS reality anyway?... Never mind)
I've seen and heard and read so much
It doesn't seem quite Real.
They're larger than life
The music seems to exist in a vacuum
with no human support.
I know this can't be the case
But...
What was that, buried under the opening chords?
A cough? A cleared throat?
Suddenly they ARE Real,
The voices and music speak to me
from out of the past
And call to me from the future
"I'll be with you now" sings the singer,
And in an odd miraculous way, he is.
Where was I when they sang that?
An infant, half a planet away
But that cough makes it human and real -
Soon, they will (sing) sing a new song
Even better than the real thing.

PS- 4am, I'm wide awake
In Australia
Skipping from War to Boy
to Zooropa
I should have been asleep hours ago
I'll have to be up in a few more
But I'm wide awake
I'm not sleeping
And I don't care.

(*L* Sorry about that... guess when I discovered Boy? Guess when I discovered the books? And I'm still waiting...

)

 

[Achtung_Bebe]

OMG I love that Alisaura! It's great.. Something that seems too good to be true -- yet found to be real with a human reaction--a cough-- among the chords! haha it's such a funny concept, and really very cool. Nicely done

 

[Loafer]

Hmmm....I seem to have a very real connection with this poem. I think we all do!

Awesome, alisaura! So many cool ideas running through this poem. It reminds me of Kurt Cobain's cough that opens up Nirvana's "Pennyroyal Tea." In the midst of all the distortion and hard guitar on that album, his cough shows there's something very real, something very human in it all. Great poem, Alisaura!

 

[Achtung_Bebe]

haha yeah loafer I think you're right about us all having a connection! When I read this poem I immediately thought of the beginning of Shadows and Tall Trees when Bono completely goes wild with clearing his throat LOL!