As an aside, I see UFO's from time to time. The most recent one was a couple of weeks ago, when I was standing with my dad at night on his balcony. Overhead a light, very high up, was making its way across the sky. It appeared to be driven by a drunkard, as it wavered from side to side, covering distances of what must have been a couple of miles at the height, and very quickly.
My dad had stepped inside and I asked "do you want to see a UFO?". Sometimes I ask people these things, most often I keep it to myself. Some of the things I've seen....
He wandered out with a concerned expression on his face, and I pointed it out.
"Interesting, huh" I said with practiced, near authentic, nonchalance.
"What makes you think its a UFO?" he asked.
"Primarily" says I, with a touch of incredulity, "because its waving from side to side like a joyrider on acid".
"Yeah, I can see what you mean" he says with a level head, "but it might just look like that because its so high up and on its own, and there's no reference for its movements. Its probably just a plane". "Could be" I mused, "but planes fly straight, and usually have blinking lights". I say this more because I want to explore than explain. I'm not trying to attribute anything special to the miniscule and innocuous light. For all I know, it is a plane.
"What? Like that" he said, as a plane appeared from the the other side of the sky, definately flying in a straight line, point of reference or not, and irrefutably attributing abnormal behaviour to the previous object.
"Yep" I said, savouring the poetic justice.
I never wanted to write about ghosts and vampires and aliens, or gangsters and gunrunners and other sensationalised characters. I wanted to write some serious fiction, something grounded in the everyday. Perhaps I still will, but what recurs is a fascination with the out-of-the-ordinary, an inspired enthusiasm for magic and madness and the impossible.
The art, perhaps, is making these things part of the everyday.
I've just returned from watching 'The Fourth Kind'. Kinda interesting, didn't provoke much of a reaction in many ways, but a few things stood out enough to tickle my fancy.
1. The Sumerian speaking alien, and suggestions of interstellar origin. Various archeological finds depicting flying sauces to me imply that while we may not come from another planet, humanity has at least been captivated and drawn to the stars for a long time.
2. The fact that the abductions occurred at 3.33am. This is never explained in the film, and occums razor leads me to think that it was simply a stylisation. Why not 2.34? Because 3.33 suggests an intent.
3. This is what really clinched it for me, what really got me interested, and it didn't occur until the end of the film. The alien creature, full of wraith and menace, audio and visual distortions etc, says "I am god".
3 1/2. When asked "you say this creature said it was god. What do you believe?"
"What I believe is that this creature....was far beyond anything we can imagine. It was...complete hopelessness, and so it wasn't god. But it could pretend to be".
Taking points 2 - 3/12 gives a damn good account of the demon 333. Point two names it, and point 3 names its reason d'etre. Its fantastic, and completely unintentional, as far as i can work out. Those that encountered it in the film frequently committed suicide or went mad. This too is a common factor in encounters with "the demon 333". Dr. John Dee was attacked by it in the late 1500's, and Alistair Crowley taunted it in the 1920's (if memory serves) which leads to his accomplices suicide. These days there is a trend in Chaos Magick circles that actually all the 'puny humans' that don't practice their enlightened brand of pop-occultism simply misunderstand its nature, and actually its quite fun to play with. They call is Choronzon. Charles Manson adopted the number 333 as his own, which is not suprising considering it belonged to something pretending to be god.
For me, it was worth sitting through the film for that tit-bit synchronicity.
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