dark shadows

After providing its viewers with 54 years of nonstop guilty pleasures, "As the World Turns" ceased production last week. And lo, the world of daytime television tilted forever on its axis.  

I don’t watch daytime serials, but my mother did. When the world was crumbling at her feet, she found refuge in a Gothic mansion inhabited by werewolves, ghosts, zombies, witches, warlocks, and man-made monsters. 

 

During the first year it aired, each episode of Dark Shadows began with a short narration by the main character, Victoria Winters. But the words didn’t carry the same significance for me back then. In fact, I used to plug my ears. Scary shows like that gave me the heebie-jeebies! But now…well, watch the first 35 seconds or so of this first episode.  I got shivers up my spine, for an entirely different reason.

You don’t have to slip into a parallel universe to discover life’s ironies.  And you don’t have to be a writer to appreciate its metaphors. But braiding them into a story that’s at once intimate and transcendent…that’s the challenge I’m working on this week.  And you?

Character image via Collinwood.net