The Annotated Afterlife

25. Moonlight Shadow

Quote
The title and the quote are both from the 1983 song "Moonlight Shadow", by Mike Oldfield, featuring the vocals of Maggie Reilly. I thought it summed this chapter up really well. The record cover is even reminiscent of Julian's situation.

Mike Oldfield was inspired to write this song after watching the 1953 film Houdini, starring Tony Curtis. It involves the possibility of life and love after death, and focuses around a drowning. However, Oldfield must have been inspired by a lot of other things, because the narrative in the song is nothing like the film.

There is a popular theory that this song is about the assassination of John Lennon, even though the details in the song don't fit with those events eg Lennon wasn't shot six times on a full moon on a Monday night, for example.

Although Mike Oldfield said the song had nothing to do with John Lennon, he was only a few blocks away when Lennon was shot, and in retrospect, he thinks it must have sunk into his unconscious in some way.

Flashback
This entire short chapter is a flashback to the events that occurred on the night Julian threw himself into the lake, which have hitherto remained a mystery. One reviewer really thought this information should have been in Chapter 1, as they found it annoying that we didn't know the truth from the start. I obviously didn't agree with their assessment.

The chapter is 99% fiction. Julian really did keep his comedy career secret when he first started. It was Noel who had his flyers vandalised (they read You're shit), not Julian. Although Julian wished he could jump in the lake after a gig, he never did, and it was his first ever gig.

In Between Life and Death, his panic and misery are not first night jitters, but the deeper and far more serious anxiety of someone doing their first gig after dropping out of university and burning their bridges. It's the existential terror of someone making a commitment to a risky career with no safety net, no fallback scheme, and then discovering they might very well fail at it.

Probably the most truthful part of this is that Julian really did feel quite anxious and uncertain about performing stand-up as a solo comedian. It took being in a comedy duo with Noel to change this for him, as he then had emotional support.

The Lake
The lake in the story is based on Whiteknights Lake (actually a reservoir) at the University of Reading in Berkshire. I chose it because that's where Julian was enrolled as a student in American Studies, it looks quite creepy in some photos, and someone did drown there by accident.

However, I never give the name of the lake, the university, or the city, so it is essentially fictional, and almost entirely out of my imagination. It is also based on Black Lake, the lake in the episode "The Legend of Old Gregg" in The Mighty Boosh TV show. Note that I describe the waters of the lake as "black" in this chapter.

Julian's Thoughts
As he walks drunkenly around the lake, Julian "follows the red brick road" of the path in front of him, a clear reference to the song "Follow the Yellow Brick Road" from The Wizard of Oz. A sign that he is being led on a path to something strange and otherworldly.

The children's rhyme of "step on a crack break your back" is an ominous thought which comes to his mind. The saying is more usually, "Step on a crack, break your mother's back", but Julian shies away from even thinking this. Is this because he knows that drowning himself would break his mother's heart, not her back?

He is careful to remove his coat because his mother bought it for him. He wants to protect it for her, perhaps a sign that deep down he wants to protect himself, something far more precious to his mother than a coat.

The Struggle
Once actually in the lake, Julian immediately abandons any idea of drowning himself, revealing for the first time that he didn't actually make a suicide attempt. The struggle which takes place with an unseen monster in the lake is loosely based on the events of "The Legend of Old Gregg" in The Mighty Boosh TV show. The fact that Julian fights for his life when under attack shows that he is not merely a failed suicide; when push comes to shove, he actively wishes to live.

This is to some extent modelled on the suicidal feelings in the film It's a Wonderful Life. George Bailey is seriously contemplating throwing himself off a bridge, when his guardian angel Clarence has the bright idea of throwing himself into the icy river first. He knows George will leap in to help a fellow soul, and instead of taking his own life, George ends up fighting to save someone else's.

Write What You Know

When I was twelve, I had a near-drowning experience in a swimming pool, which helped inform the events of this chapter. I seem to write about drowning quite a bit! (A lifeguard rescued me, she gave me mouth to mouth, I was fine. I never even told anybody about it, because I was embarrassed and because I worried I wouldn't be allowed to go swimming again.)