I've never been there.

[tinyjo]

Fireworks always make me feel oddly melancholy and nervous but I don't understand why. On one level I know it's because the sounds remind me or make me think of the sounds of a city of war. Sitting at home on November the 5th I think of Sarajevo, of the destruction of streets, of the TV footage of war reporters in the hills watching the city being destroyed. This is what war would sound like, I think.

What I don't understand is *why* it has such a strong effect on me. I wasn't young enough to be hugely impressionable at the time of Bosnia, 10 or so by then if I remember correctly. Or is that still an age at which fears are formed? Or was there another conflict in my earlier childhood? One that I was too young to remember the name of, but remember the sound of perfectly? Help me out, you older people.

Comments

fear the skies

[cleanskies.livejournal.com]

Are you too young to remember the Falklands War? In 1982 it dominated the BBC, war coverage like there had never been war coverage before, and everyone appalled but glued to their TVs, unable to look, unable to look away, I'm sure I remember crying about that -- the ship that sank, and all those people and animals dying. Then there's the bomb scares -- we've seen a fair amount of Ireland and London blown up, one way and another, and all of that has over the years got tangled with our grandparents' memories of the blanket bombing campaigns at the end of WW2, and our/our parents years of waiting for the nukes to fall and start WW3.

But perhaps whatever's scaring you happened in a nightmare, which is why (I think) fireworks don't scare me, but the sound of something large striking does. It's not like the airborne bangs of fireworks, it's a ground-bourne, flesh-felt sound you feel low in your body, through your feet. I've only heard it once, and that wasn't especially scary (a car crashing into the building I was in) but my reaction to the noise was out of all proportion. So I suppose that once I dreamt of being bombed, and that was the noise that I heard.

Re: fear the skies

[sparkymark.livejournal.com]

The Falklands reporting wasn't very visceral: Thatch banned front-line reporting as that is what turned the tide of support during the Vietnam conflict. Jo was very tiny then anyway. The second gulf war (the American one rather then the Iran/Iraq war, which was referred to as the gulf war at them time as can be heard on the radio in "Edge of Darkness") had more televised fireworks over Israel, in 1990.

I got humiliated at a fireworks party Novmber the 5th 1987, which took me several Novemeber the 5ths to get over, but I'm OK now.

Re: fear the skies

[cleanskies.livejournal.com]

God, Thatcher was scary, wasn't she? Fireworks have *nothing* on her gargoyle face. You're right about it not being visceral, but that didn't stop it getting to me. My father (and some of my teachers) were very enthusiastic conservatives so it was a bit of an education about nasty grown-ups, too ...

Re: fear the skies

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

God, Thatcher was scary, wasn't she?

Yes, yes and yes again. In fact, she's still scary now when they manage to wheel her out. When ever I see her these days I think of a wicked witch in a fairy tale.

Fireworks

[(Anonymous)]

10 is still very young in terms of brain development; it's when parsing and paring starts to occur although the synaptic growth also continues; so 10 year olds are very impressionable.

Fireworks displays are often a falsely jolly thing, and particularly Guy Fawkes' Night; after all, we are "celebrating" an occasion when a passionately-committed set of people were prepared to kill a lot of other people; and Fawkes died an horrible death. Not really that whoop-de-doo lighthearted frivol one might have on, say, a midsummer evening when an outdoor "Proms" concert finishes with some sparkly bits over a lake, after a lovely picnic and the entire brass section has done a Mexcian wave for no apparent reason during one of the pieces.

I find that a lot of ambient and house music has a recurrent sound of what my brain says are tracer bullets. Can't bear the stuff for that reason. But I know why; too much exposure to tv coverage of the Viet Nam war. I was 10 in 1967 and there had been four years of it already and another 5 to go. I hate the sound of tracer fire; and some fast fireworks sound like that too.

Don't underestimate what exposure to war or war-type sounds does to minds of children; we are hard-wired to tune in exquisitely sensitively to sounds which indicate there might be a threat to our lives and the more vulnerable we are the better tuned we are. Ten is still very vulnerable and the brain is not yet pruned to interpret those sounds as other than threatening.

sounds like people and animals dying

[(Anonymous)]

i live in hastings. we apparently are very proud of our bonfire society's here.well it sounds like war to me.
i've never been in a war zone! it seems to me that so many people in the world are suffering the effects of war at the moment i should almost feel guilty about never knowing what war was like.
i hear people daily complaining about the influx of refugees into this country. i've lived here all my life and with or without fireworks i'd rather live elswere. let the people that hate put themselves in the position of the people they hate. would they like to listen to the sound of useless fireworks remind them of why they came to this shithole in the first place?