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Theatre Icons

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Ciz01

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Jan 2, 2007
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I live in Manchester UK and as a child spent a bit of time in a local park which is a huge municipal area. Many years ago I was walking back from one of the ponds with my dad and brother, sister and a couple of friends (i'm guessing i was about 9 or 10), i had stopped for some reason on the path and the rest of teh party had walked on, not too far that i couldn't see them so at no point did a feel alone or vulnerable.

I realised the reason i had stopped was that i had felt compelled to look over into the masses of rhododenrons (they are all over the park) they were about 100 metres away, as i did this two huge and grotesque heads appeared out of the bushes. My memory says that they wree similar to the icons used to denote theatres but this could be my brain defaulting to something i knew. The memory is still pretty vivid as i was obviously startled and a little scared at the time.

Years later i overheard a friend of mine talking about the strange happenings in the masses of bushes in this park but i didn't qiuz him on it.

I was wondering if there had been similar experiences or perhaps the 'theatre heads' mean something.
 
The smiling and frowning faces seens as masks representing drama are the Ancient Greek Muses Thalia and Melpomene, muses of comedy and tragedy respectively, both daughters of Zeus and therefore quite high up in yer Greek pantheon (although Zeus had a lot of kids).
Thalia is also the Muse of 'idyllic poetry' and Melpomene of 'joyous singing' - I never did quite work out how those went together with comedy and tragedy.
The job of the Muses was basically to inspire one to create the art they represented.
They are both fairly rustic godesses and so their appearance in foliage is not inappropriate.

Maybe you should write a poem/play/song about the experience. :)
 
Maybe it's a stupid question, but I'll ask it: could the faces have been two people wearing masks, or did they seem to be "real"?

Or it might be like the bushes on that ghost photograph of the old lady in the Ghosts forum, a form of simulacra?
 
Ciz01 said:
I was wondering if there had been similar experiences or perhaps the 'theatre heads' mean something.
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Very different circumstances but connected.

This happened to me when my family lived in a large semi-detached Edwardian house. It was the kind of place that at first glance might give certain temperaments the creeps but it had a friendly and welcoming atmosphere which was often commented upon by visitors as well as the family. Besides this I was a fairly hardy child and had no fear of the dark or particular terror of things that go bump in the night. And just to ameliorate matters even more, on the night in question I could hear the bustle and laughter of two female students who lodged with us and shared the room next to mine. So to put it simply - I was completely relaxed, hadn’t been watching scary movies and was not prone to night terrors.

My bed faced a window which was covered by a yellow(ish) blind upon which there was a network of shadows created by the bare branches of the trees between my room and our next door neighbours garage light. My bedside light was on and I had been reading but something about the shadows caught my attention and, as I watched, the individual shadow branches appeared to separate and then start to reform in front of my eyes. I became aware that an understandable image was about to form and this was when I began to get really scared - not wanting to see the picture. It became obvious that what was about to form was an image of the two masks you describe but, at the last moment, before the picture was perfect I performed the time honoured cliché and pulled the covers over my head. For some reason it seemed vitally important that I didn’t see the finished product.

I have always put this experience down to a waking dream or some kind of hypnopompic or whatever it is you call the other one, hallucination. The strange thing was that although terrified at the end of the sequence I recovered almost immediately, to the point where I got up fiddled with the blinds, looked outside and then got back into bed and stared at the window half hoping the thing would happen again. I think maybe the whole thing seemed so bizarre and outside of any logic, even supernatural logic, that I wrote it off automatically as a figment of my imagination.
 
Ciz01 said:
Years later i overheard a friend of mine talking about the strange happenings in the masses of bushes in this park but i didn't qiuz him on it.
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Hi - what was the location if you dont mind me asking.
 
I'm quite embarrassed to admit this but when I was younger (more than a decade ago this is) I went through a phase of using LSD. One of the images that I would frequently "see" when I looked at anything with an irregular pattern (e.g. leaves, wood grain, anything textured really) was the image of the two theatre masks. My mind seemed to somehow shape the irregular patterns into small repetitive images of these masks. I always thought it was because they were familiar iconic images. We all know the brain loves to see faces where there are none and I wonder if these theatre masks are commonly seen because they are very simple but recognisable representations of a face.
 
In answers to your questions:
gncxx - it could have been masks and i've always put it down to this but they would have had to be on sticks or poles and it's a lot of trouble to go to to try and scare a kid. the thing was they were quite a way away and they would have had no real way of knowing if i was looking at them if they were hiding in the bushes.

Henryford - It was Heaton Park

mindalia - it was when i was 9/10 and way before i'd tried any hallucenagenics.
 
It is an area that you can't walk down now but if you know where the golly pond was (near the golf course) you could at one time get to it by parking up in the carpark behind Heaton Hall next to the tennis courts (which are still there although the carpark is not) there was a track that took you to the golly pond, it was a vehicle track but only park vehicles were allowed otherwise it was a footpath. I have been recently and noticed that although the track is there it is fenced off and work is being done. If you need another baring then the 'summer house' which i think is the highest part of teh park is right near the tracks entrance. Any good?
 
I had a dream involving these masks last night, but as it was after reading this thread, I think it's probably not meaningful ;)
 
Hmm, I don't know, perhaps we shouldn't write off the Ancient Gods just yet...
 
Ciz01 said:
mindalia - it was when i was 9/10 and way before i'd tried any hallucenagenics.
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Oh, no, I wasn't suggesting you were high or anything. It just crossed my mind that the images might be something the brain produces from random images and maybe your subconscious interpreted something else as the theatre masks.
 
For all its faults, LSD is quite a good way of seeing what images one's uncons cious brain might come up with.
 
Oh, really?

For all its faults, LSD is quite a good way of seeing what images one's uncons cious brain might come up with.
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I'm not entirely convinced LSD is a 'Good way" of doing anything.

I have had friends really screw themselves up mentally on it.

Bad medicine.
 
Taking LSD as a [how can I put this?] non-spiritual person, is equivalent of trying to drive a car without knowing what it is actually for. Or trying to swim without having ever seen water etc etc etc. Its a powerful and yes quite wise drug but you have to know what you are getting into and especially what you are looking for. Basically you have to know yourself and not be afraid of your "dark corners".
 
If you believe that, you'll believe anything. A wise drug my arse. :lol:

And yes, I do know what I'm talking about. I did acid as a teenager, for the same reason as most honest people would admit to - to get off my face as fast and cheaply as possible. I don't do it now - I grew out of it.
 
escargot1 said:
If you believe that, you'll believe anything. A wise drug my arse. :lol:

And yes, I do know what I'm talking about. I did acid as a teenager, for the same reason as most honest people would admit to - to get off my face as fast and cheaply as possible. I don't do it now - I grew out of it.
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Good for you!

Edited to add:
See when I took it it was more than interesting. Have no desire to go into detail here but it proves my point. There are "party" drugs, like ecstacy or booze and then there are mind opening drugs [if you let them and learn], which include LSD and cannabis to some extent. So if you took it to get red-arsed, why am I not amazed by your comment :roll:
 
Once you've taken a drug, you have no control over what effect it has on you.

I will buy the idea that an ancient shaman might have believed his drug-induced visions to be a form of spiritual enlightenment, but that doesn't apply to modern people because we have not been raised in that level of spirituality. No matter how 'mind-expanding' a drug appears, it's still just getting off your face. I'm not fooled.
 
escargot1 said:
Once you've taken a drug, you have no control over what effect it has on you.

I will buy the idea that an ancient shaman might have believed his drug-induced visions to be a form of spiritual enlightenment, but that doesn't apply to modern people because we have not been raised in that level of spirituality. No matter how 'mind-expanding' a drug appears, it's still just getting off your face. I'm not fooled.
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Shame that you think that. I feel that I do have control to a certain extent but the whole point is to loose yourself in what your mind is coming up with and NOT control it. We are almost always in "control", certain drugs however let you go deeper, let you experience thoughts and images that you would never dream of when sober. I have seen amazing out of this world images that not even the best computer graphics could render. I have been shown details of ordinary things that made me think how we are missing all these when our mind is funnelled and only sees what is important. I've had severeal notions of the old "secret of the universe" which are all probably bollox but nevertheless seem to be good theories of why we are.
I have experienced extreme closeness to animals [no not in that way], spiritually, have connected with them on a level that most people in ordinary life don't get the chance.
Now if I were I beer guzzling builder who thinks with his balls most of the time and whose experience of spirituality is that of reading the sun and who takes LSD because he want's to get "drunk" but in a different way, I'd say that I wouldn't get much out of this drug.

PS: I didn't say that you escargot are anything like what I described, its merely a crass example ;)
 
I think LSD and similar drugs are mind altering as opposed to mind opening.
 
There's no good reason for this thread to go in this direction.
I am sure we have plenty of drugs threads and it is one of those contentious subjects everyone seems to have very firm opinions on, but it is hardly relevant to the OP's story - it is all a bit like someone's IHTM being hijacked by the 'OIL' wars ranting just because the original story mentioned something made of plastic.

I don't mean to sound so grumpy but really it's been done to death already.
 
Yup. People talking about how great drugs are - possibly the most boring thing in the world.
 
mindalai said:
One of the images that I would frequently "see" when I looked at anything with an irregular pattern (e.g. leaves, wood grain, anything textured really) was the image of the two theatre masks. My mind seemed to somehow shape the irregular patterns into small repetitive images of these masks.
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That reminds me of a creepy short story I read recently. There's this woman who's being pursued by some sort of monster, and it appears to her through complex patterns, like the ones you mentioned. She ends up refusing to leave her furnitureless, white-painted apartment, lest she encounter any such patterns. Eventually she disappears, but the narrator finds a pattern of cracks in the paint of one of her walls, and within that pattern is the image of a woman being pulled away. :shock:
 
Zothecula - would that have been Details by China Mieville? If so, it is indeed creepy. Apparently, there's a film in the works based loosely on the short story's premise.
 
TheQuixote said:
Zothecula - would that have been Details by China Mieville? If so, it is indeed creepy. Apparently, there's a film in the works based loosely on the short story's premise.
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Has the ring of Paul Auster to it...
 
I read this story recently and my first response to the post was to identify it with one of the two Margo Lanagan anthologies I read last month, Black Juice and White Time. However, I also read Looking for Jake and Other Stories, a China Mieville anthology, last month (big month for short stories!), so I might have conflated authors.

So, Zothecula? Enquiring minds want to know.

But the truly enquiring mind should go read all three anthologies. They're all good, with a high level of weirdness and originality.[/i]
 
TheQuixote wins the new car! It was indeed "Details" by China Mieville. I came across it in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, 16th Edition.
 
Hi guys, haven't posted here for quite a while.

Surely the thing about any mind-altering substance, and indeed the mind itself is, we don't really know what is going on. We observe the end results - consciousness, images in our brains etc, and we then create theoretical models of why they occur.

These theoretical models reflect the current fashions of belief. They vary from generation to generation. In times when religion and spiritual explanations are fashionable, most people will explain the unexplained aspects of the brain/mind in terms of spirtual and religious imagery. In more sceptical times, most people will favor 'scientific' imagery for the same purpose.

The deeper truth that tends to be forgotten by all sides is the almost total absence of hard evidence for either set of beliefs. We don't know why we 'see things' when under the influence of drugs, we just know that we do. Sure, it might well be that the drug acts upon a part of the brain to create an entirely subjective hallucination. But it might equally well be the drug acts upon that part of the brain to enable a different form of perception, and that people are seeing stuff that is to some extent quantifiably there, but imperceptible to most of us most of the time.

To say that either one of these possibilities is more or less likely than the other is really to be expressing a subjective prejudice. We have no evidence to support either conclusion, and the true scientist should remain in perfect equipoise between the two polarities. ;)

Not having any preconceived opinions can be the hardest thing of all, can't it?
 
What follows was a dream, not an objective experience. But I think it still belongs here:

Nearly a half-century ago what was probably the best photograph ever executed of my Mother was taken by a Cincinnati newspaper photographer for a feature story.

The photograph remained taped to my bedroom wall for the better part a decade.

One November my Dad asked me for the photo. Then he and a fellow artist produced a very professional oil painting from it, as a Christmas present for Mom.

More years passed, with the portrait hanging on the living room wall.

One night I dreamed that I was gazing at the portrait. As I watched the face turned into a big-eyed "theater mask" which then floated from the canvas and began pursuing me through the house.

But unlike traditional theater masks, this one neithher smiled nor frowned. The mouth was a straight line, conveying no emotion of any kind.

Yet that clay-colored mask was entirely malign, so intensely so that I still remember this dream as one of the most terrifying I've ever experienced.

[Freudians can make of this what they will.]

P. S. It never occurred to me before this moment but a "theater mask" with large eyes and a slit-like mouth is remarkably similar to many later descriptions of "UFO greys."

EDIT - Changed one letter only, correcting "no" to "nor."
 
I may go up to Heaton Park tomorrow and check it out, see if I can find the spot.
 
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