Writers always start if “what ifs” when it comes to new ideas. What if Hitler reigned victorious? What if men continued to evolved and now have super powers? These “what’if” scenarios gave birth to parallel universes, forking worlds of untold possibilities.
Nicholas Gurewitch (of my favorite defunct dadist webcomic) came up with the soundtrack of Wes Anderson’s next film called The Cloud Photographers. If you’re familiar with Anderson’s oeuvre in regards to music, there’s always an element of whimsy and nostalgia and Gurewitch manages to reflect that in this “fiction[al], but yet so plausible” soundtrack.
Another what-if was a website that recently popped up about a man who claimed to have been to and have returned from an alternate universe where the Beatles never broke up. He came back with proof of an album, a cassette tape, called Everyday Chemistry. I downloaded the album, listened to it. There’s a Beatles-esque quality to it but it’s more… electronic, I guess, to reflect the changing style in this day and age. Whether this be a shrewd ploy to pimp one’s demo or an art project remains to be seen but the idea of the Beatles still together is compelling.
In fact, with all the speculative fiction out there, I like to think there are other worlds out there.
And sometimes, I wonder if this really is the best of all possible worlds.
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