Mysteries of the 1980's: A-ha! Take On Me, WTF does it really mean?

One of the signature video's from the MTV years, A-ha!'s Take On Me is a beloved song and video, but what does it really mean? Any of it? The lyrics tell one story, and the visual contains another narrative. Do they form some cohesive image together, and are they cemented together in our minds to one narrative or the other?

A-ha! Take on me

B/W Comic book panels depict a race, panels flash on racers, there is violence, and the young hero of the comics

In a diner, we find a lonely girl, she sits alone in a cafe. She is reading the comic intently focused upon the panel depicting the young hero. Through some magical occurance, the young hero comes to life and pulls the lonely girl into the comic book.

They fall in love.

Meanwhile, the waitress returns to collect the tab for the lonely girls meal. The lonely girl is gone, and has stiffed her. She angrily crumples the comic book, and flings it into garbage bin behind the counter.

They fall in love, but suddenly these evil looking racers brandishing wrenches appear from the newly warped world. They are intent on making our young hero pay for some sleight he committed against them during the race. They are very angry.

The young hero, realizes that he must save the lonely girl, so he opens a portal back into the real world. Though sadly, the evil racers catch up to our young hero.

Return to the diner to find all of the customers aghast at the lonely girl's reappearance behind the counter in the greasy floor, covered in newsprint. The lonely girl is confused, covered in ink, and terrified about the fate of the young hero of the comic book. She rushes back to her apartment to discover that the young hero has been pummeled with a wrench. Her horror and simultaneous love is so strong, that it resurrects the young hero and transports him into the lonely girl's reality.

It is a pure matter of speculation about what followed. Whether the lonely girl and the young hero lived a happy life, or whether they were plagued by evil racers bent on their destruction will likely remain a mystery of the 1980's.

Part 2. A-ha! Take on Me Lyrics

If you read the lyrics, they tell of a chance meeting. We don't know if these are acquaintances or random people in bars; only that two people are talking. One person, says that they don't know what to say so they're going to say it anyway. It's a cryptic statement that, this particular day when these two people are sitting and talking that today is another day to find the other person. The first detects that the second person is taken aback, and reiterates to them that they will be coming for their love if that is alright with them.

 The first person, who was confused about having something to say, then challenges the other person to take them on, as if in a fist fight, or a battle of wits, possibly a romantic entanglement. As their conversation proceeds, the first person gradually becomes more insistent that they should fight, or have some other implied altercation. Then, the first person, in a passive-agressive tactic, claims that they will be gone in a day or two. The first person, then tells the other that they are wary and they need to realize that he will be coming after them in a day, or two. These threats persist, until at the end the first person has told them they will be coming for them in a day.

Is 'Take On Me" the story of an insistent drunk trying to score, or a fantasy tale of an over-imaginitive girl in love with a comic-book hero. Until later, it remains a Mystery of the 1980's

2013

2013

I find it a little remarkable when I find people who think that this planet has only been around for 2000 years, or 10,000 years. I can't understand how limited your views of reality would have to be to accept such a thing as true. I can look into the sky with my eyes and see stars that are obviously far away. I can see the sun, burning my eyes on a summer day. I know how long it takes to get from one point to another, and I know that we're on a rock in space held together by a force that was named gravity about 300 years ago by another human. I think that we have been a civilization, a race of humans on Earth for far longer than we truly know. So, it just seems silly to say it's 2013 when it's probably closer to the year 800,000.I don't know.
Have we just told ourselves these things for deceptions to maintain order throughout the centuries, to build cities, raise temples, and establish governments in the name of religions? What stories are we telling ourselves today to sell adult diapers, floor cleaners, hard-on pills, lipsticks, ipads, Audis, and belief systems that are foreign to our long history? We have entire bureaucracies to administer our lies, organizations to maintain our truth, and associations to ensure that all of the i's and t's get tagged in every single transmission. We've turned the magnificence of our Earth into a tiny plastic box we can carry in our hands with the wealth of our narcissism illuminated within.

I'm depressed lately. I don't think I want to admit that to myself.
 
I've not been writing at all lately. I think I'm in some daze. This, 2013, this point in the history of Earth and this quadrant of the galaxy that we've chosen to mark as the 2013th year of our civilization at this age of humankind has been one of the worst years of my life. I've been sued by the company administering my student loan for a portion of the loan that they loaned to me, that they were loaned to by the Federal Government. I've been told by my home state that I should pay my former spouse more in child support because I haven't been getting my son for visitation when she broke the parenting plan and turned my kid against me. So, yes, 2013 has turned into a remarkably wonderful year of Catch-22. It's been one of the first years where I've actively contemplated suicide, not to the point of carrying out anything, but just as an out to this idiotic world that we are living in now. I've been playing defense and plotting offensives all year, and I'm exhausted mentally, spiritually, and emotionally.

I'm increasingly sick and tired of all of this consumerism, want, need, must-have, must-see, gotta get me one of those, new app, fantastic, amazing, spectacular, fuck it all. I hardly feel like I can trust what I get in the grocery store, especially something in a bright-colorful box with a misleading photo of the contents.

But, I suppose that I'll go on fighting this stupid reality. I'll make my appeals, file my bankruptcies, and somehow make the system work for me to carve out some tiny space here on this harsh rock, no matter how insignificant it is in the scope of the Universe.

Will it ever happen?

Well  it looks as if it's been a while since I've updated this tirade. I think I'm moving toward a stage where I just don't give a flying fuck about what is happening in society. I don't know if I just got completely burned out during the election cycle, or what it is, but I am nonetheless burned out. I'm finding that every time I visit the websites I get news from, there are about 90% of things contained therein that I simply do not care to hear about, and the bulk of that is entertainment news. I don't know why, maybe I'm depressed, or getting depressed; but really who cares what Hollywood starlet is banging which star, or what they wore to what event, or what young punk is embroiled in whatever dumbass conflict. But, regardless it seems impossible to avoid hearing about it.

Maybe I should go to different websites, or just take a long holiday from the always-on, constantly connected world that we live in today. I'm betting that a few weeks in the woods would cure all of what is ailing my spirit, because this idiot world just seems to get worse by the day.

We're feasting on the trails and tribulations of others, the secret domestic lives of denizens of trailer parks, and the retrograde politics of morality are creating constant friction amongst us in our connected lives. Frankly, I find it a disappointing time to be alive. I suppose growing up, I thought that by this time in my life, humanity would have solved so many of the trivial things that seem to be major issues of conflict today, many of which were solved by previous generations, but old wounds are stirred again and some segments of society, that happen to have power, are driving wedges into society and undermining the very fabric of mankind for the sole benefit of profiting at the expense of others.

The governments of the world are heading towards new wars before they even solve the conflicts from previous wars. There doesn't seem to be much hope that things will change and we'll get that peaceful world that has been talked about for so long by so many, instead society seems to be in decline and retreat toward a draconian age where rights are diminished instead of expanded, peace becomes fleeting at the most simple levels, and the individual is shackled to debts they can't meet with a burdens that will never be lifted. This is an exhausting and uncertain time to live, which is sad, because we as a race have the capabilities to live in a veritable paradise, if it weren't for the widespread oppression brought about by unchecked global capitalism.

The human race should, by now in my opinion, have found greater capabilities to tolerate the differences which strengthen us, instead of allowing those differences to become the weaknesses that divide us. Yet, there doesn't seem to be a lot of hope that this will ever be the case. All of our separate ideologies simply won't coalesce into widespread peace. We can't even respect our planet enough to protect it, instead we are hell-bent on turning our lands into massive desolate wastes, fracked, and raped into uninhabitability.

I made a joke last week by pondering that someone at NASA once said, "We'll never get to Uranus if we don't work together." Of course it's juvenile sounding, but it sums up one of the greatest failures of the human race in my opinion, and that is the constant urge to 'get there first' among the nations of the world. It's foolish to think that mankind will ever make it to another planet without the cooperation of multiple nations, it's simply too resource and capital intensive for one country to attempt to send a manned mission to another planet, or deep into interstellar space, instead our national pride leads to failure, and those dreams are cast into the waste bin.

Perhaps I've always naively believed that there would be a day on this rock that all of the  races of men would find a way to cooperate to achieve together the unthinkable, such as solving all of the problems of the world hunger, strife amonst nations, interpersonal relationships, but those things are apparently just dreams. We're still far to immature to make it off this rock and into the depths of space, we can't get along with each other over the most trivial issues, how would we ever cooperate on massive projects that could advance all of mankind?