I’ve always liked the idea of parallel universes.
That sounds geeky, or whatever, but I was born in 1988 – all the pop culture references of the era were on the subject. Time travel and parallel worlds were everywhere, literally, and they were even inside our heads – isn't that what happened to the kid in Neverending Story?
After being allowed some sips of cold pilsner, on a couch, at some time in the mid 1990s – my mind was blown. Watching The Terminator with my dad, which was kept as a secret from my mom; I was fascinated with the idea of time travel and Linda Hamilton (but that’s a story for another time).
By the time the final scene played at the gas station and the polaroid photo is taken, I’d already drawn a crazy spider diagram in my head about how that would work, how it wouldn’t work and how many Johns had sent back how many Kyles to save how many Sarahs?
"Viene tormenta!"
The 2007 BBC documentary “Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives”, in which American rock musician Mark Oliver Everett talks with physicists and the former colleagues of his father—Hugh Everett—about his father's many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, fused my love of the band EELS with the Many Worlds Theory. Don’t worry if you haven’t seen it, there are infinite “yous” in other parallel universes that have. But I recommend that you do.
The idea fascinated me and continued to come up more and more; Star Trek, Butterfly Effect, Donnie Darko, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Stranger Things, Dark, Charmed, X-Files, Rick & Morty – it never went away.
But most of them, due to the nature of the media and for the sake of rich storytelling, portrayed “heroes and villains” changing places, technology, gadgetry or even something more supernatural to gain access to these worlds.
But most of them, due to the nature of the media and for the sake of rich storytelling, portrayed “heroes and villains” changing places, technology, gadgetry or even something more supernatural to gain access to these worlds.
What if there were just normal people there, living their lives?
What if they weren’t exact opposites of us with different hair colours?
What if, in their universe, having a raspberry for a head was just fine AND dandy?
That’s Parallelwelt.