Jim Adams is the ever-patient host of Mindlovemisery Menagerie’s Music Challenge. Jim says:
The challenge today is to focus on [The Talking Heads song, “Wild Wild Life”] and use it for inspiration in any form of creative expression (including but not limited to short stories, a piece of flash fiction, poems, lyrics, artwork, photography, (etc.) that you can share with the writing community.
As I’m reading through the lyrics to this most excellent Talking Heads song, what I take from it is that there are many forms of wild life, and what a wild life is will depend on an individual’s perceptions of not only what is wild, but in contrast, what is tame. Wild would seem to be whatever a person looks at in their world as outside of the tame.
I’m not sure what I would have written about before this afternoon, but since I went to see Quentin Tarantino’s new movie, “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood,” I’d like to talk about the movie generally, without giving any spoilers away.
There has been enough publicity out there that most probably know that this movie revolves around the Sharon Tate murder and the Manson Family. Part of the movie takes a look at the cult and where they lived as the Manson Family. It was a ranch set out in the middle of California scrub land from the looks of it. Their leader was an enigmatic psychopath that brainwashed them.
It’s only a guess but in their minds they were probably living a wild life, something outside of what a tame version of themselves would live, and in the process rejecting the bounds of cultural norms. Interestingly, those looking at them from outside of the cult would also consider them as living a wild life, but wild not in a good way but wild as in depraved and useless.
Manson used cultural norms as weapons to beat his followers down with. He had to cut the weak from the herd in order to manipulate them to his will.
A few years back I read an interview with one of the younger followers, a girl who was underage. She talked about how he groomed her for exploitation. Nobody had a will to stand up to him and say no, it’s wrong to exploit a young girl that way.
Did you know that Manson was a musician? Do you know that Dennis Wilson of The Beach Boys got drawn into the madness of the Manson cult? That Wilson introduced Manson to one of the producers of The Beach Boys music in hopes that the producer would take Manson on as a client? The producer turned Manson’s music down. According to another report I read, that producer owned the house where Tate was killed, and Manson was looking for that producer the night the evil was committed. Manson, the one who pounded into his members’ heads that living within the bounds of tame culture was wrong, was doing his best to get a record deal. What kind of wild life is that?
Jim described the David Byrne film: “True Stories was a film that includes 23 songs directed by David Byrne, related to quirky take on small-town America, set in the folksy, fictional Texas town of Virgil as it ramped up to a sesquicentennial festival the “Celebration of Specialness”.
Only David Byrne knows the mind of David Byrne, but when I read the lyrics of Wild Wild Life and see the plot – I used to have this movie on VHS and have seen it more than once – the town Virgil, Texas, is very low-key, very tame, and honestly, very boring, and the festival they are trying to drum up is like trying to give CPR to a mummy and bring it back to life. Virgil is terminally tame – AND THAT’S OK. There is no cosmic law that tame must be jump started with artificial wildness.
I don’t care much about how or why Manson became who he was. Invariably these individuals have suffered multiple traumas that at some point strip their humanity away and replace it with the vacuum of a monster. It’s a tired equation.
What is infinitely more fascinating to me is what was it in his follower’s lives that made them feel that tame wasn’t enough for them, so they turned to Manson’s idea of wild?
Tao Talk 
Again, I am fascinated by your analysis of this song Li. You never cease to amaze me with your intellectual mind and your profound knowledge of various things. The wild to tame analogy made perfect sense and although I have seen many commercials on the movie “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood”, I did not know it was about Manson. Would you recommend watching the David Byrne film “True Stories”?
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Thanks Jim. I haven’t seen any commercials, trailers, etc. for “Once Upon a Time…,” but being a Tarantino devotee, I’ve kept my finger on the pulse of this movie and so knew what it was about. The True Stories movie is VERY low-key, where that scene in the video is the highlight. Not a great movie, but it is a movie with a message. I would be much more likely to recommend you see the Tarantino film. Another masterpiece by the master!
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I have seen the two Sergio Leone movies Once Upon a Time in America and Once Upon a Time in the West, and the Robert Rodriguez movie Once Upon a Time in Mexico, which were all good.
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Aha! Jim, now I see Tarantino is giving a nod with his title to Sergio Leone and Robert Rodriguez, both of whom he admires and has worked with before. Haven’t seen the Leone movies but have seen the Rodriguez one. I admire Rodriguez directing skills and still want to see his latest, Alita: Battle Angel, but the L won’t loan it out yet.
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Where do you keep all of your collectables, you have so many records and coloring books and other stuff.
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I have a house! Easy.
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I am a survivor of a satanic cult, not by choice, I was recruited, by those who were meant to be caring for me, in a bording school for the blind in the early 1980’s and into the early 90’s. I survived, but now have dissociative identity disorder, and ptsd due to having been in the cult, it was horrendous. I am dying to see the movie, just to see how they did it if its good and portrays cults and in what light they portray them. I don’t know of the Sharon tate case though.
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Carol Anne, first I’M SO SORRY you were subjected to such a cult. How did you get away from them? Carol, PLEASE be careful if you watch the movie. It could be triggering for you :(
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Well I left the school when I was 16 I couldn’t take being there anymore so I asked my mum if I could go to school back home and she said yes but she doesn’t really know what went on she knows bits and pieces of it but not the whole story I couldn’t bring myself to tell her she be so devastated and heartbroken she doesn’t know I was abused but she doesn’t know to what extent
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I’m glad you got out of there and I hope that school was closed down?
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It was, it was close down in 1996 thank goodness for that
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When I think of the lives that were maimed in that place and in places like it….
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I know, tragic, hate that I am a survivor, but I am glad I survived it
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I think Guns and Roses had the bad taste of doing a Manson song…just checked and they did… Look at Your Game, Girl
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ACK no thanks. I don’t want anything from the mind of Manson.
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There are do’s and don’ts in life….covering a Charles Manson song…definitely on the don’ts. Just bad taste…another reason not to like Axl Rose.
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My thought exactly.
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