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www.kevacho.com
©2002-2024
Kevin Michael Vance
Writer - Portland, Oregon
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October 25, 2006
All hail: HALLOWEEN
I have always adored Halloween. It has been, and forever will be I should imagine very special to me; in a way that is difficult to put into words. Maybe, it's the whole aesthetics that draws me like a shambling, ambulatory corpse is drawn, as we all should know, to ripe, ready, and fresh brains. Maybe, it's the dark, russet colors, the scattered, rustling leaves, ghosts and ghouls and goblins and vampires flitting through the night, the smell of blood, the taste of candy, the hideous sounds echoing beneath our subconscious, the change in the air. Never, has it failed to inspire in me an overwhelming sense of childish glee, and a sense of motion, of forward progress. To be a different person, if only for one night, to play a part, to give into dark desires and even darker impulses; all fills me with an enveloping warmth, like warm cider, that no other holiday can hope to inspire.
I am different. I think I always have been. My tendencies, my likes, tend more toward the macabre. Growing up I always liked the bad guys better than the good: this opinion painfully evinced when I first witnessed Luke Skywalker take on Darth Vader. On Halloween, I am embraced, as are many just like me, collectively and socially. And not to be too evasive or verbose, but Halloween is also fun: allowing both children and adults to simply and transcendently play, throwing away proper or mature things and donning both inner and outer masks.
I have tried to explain this love for Halloween to others before, but there have been many that did not, or could not, grasp my curious fascination. There was, however, Ray Bradbury- in my humble opinion the greatest author of the twentieth century- who had written an essay on Halloween (which, of course, I could not find) that does a far more accurate and professional job of explaining the beauties of Halloween than I could ever hope to achieve, here in these humble random thoughts. I have always wished to thank him for that, and the countless other stories and readings of his that have enriched, enlightened, and entertained me since I first stumbled upon his book, The Halloween Tree, as a skinny, sixth grader, in Montana. Ever since I read that, I knew that I was not alone. That there were others out there in the night just like me, worshipping the holiday for all it was worth, reveling in the stony visage of skulls, the ghastly expressions of ghouls, and the blood-soaked grimaces of vampires.
Thank you, Mr. Bradbury. Your worth as a writer is more than you could ever possibly imagine. You inspired in me, more than my love of Halloween. You inspired me to write.
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