✨🚪🪐 Stargate reignited my passion for art 🎨 and history 📚🏛️
While working on some sewn pieces for Polite Rebellion’s Loose Ends project i was coming to the end of a re-watch of Stargate SG-1 (NOW TV took it off their service on the day i handed the pieces over to Ellie) and i started having some flashbacks.
Not bad flashbacks, well, some were but not all. They were flashbacks to a time just over a decade ago when I was a fresh graduate trying to do anything creative to keep myself creative and not let those skills and passion fall off into the oblivion they often do when you end up doing things like working in a call centre 🤮 It’s that time that I would watch an episode of Stargate SG-1 on the TV on an evening while doing something creative. Anything creative.
What are u on about now
For anyone who hasn’t heard of it (which is most of the ppl i have ever mentioned it to) Stargate SG-1 is the 1997 TV show spin off - starring Macguver himself Richard Dean Anderson, Michael Shanks, Amanda Tapping and Christopher Judge - of the 1994 Stargate film (which slightly more people have heard of) - starring Kurt Russel and James Spader - which centres around an alien device that creates stable wormholes to other planets known as the stargate. The film and the tv series both use conspiracy theories, that would later be seen on Ancient Aliens, as its basis.
In the tv show the main 4 characters would travel to other planets in search of knowledge and weapons (the stargate was housed in a secret American air force base. No not Area 51. They go there at some point in the show and it proves to be boring by comparison lol), with Michael Shanks taking over James Spader’s role of Daniel Jackson from the movie.
Daniel Jackson is a civilian archaeologist and linguist who was laughed out of academia for thinking the pyramids were docking ports for space ships (which is proven correct in the show) which an alien race used to masquerade as egyptian gods and steal humans as slaves and transport them across the galaxy . Watching the show growing up I wanted to be him cuz he was so cool and brainy and an ancient history nerd like me, and rewatching in my 30s I do still identify with him a bit but mostly he’s a bit of a prick I began to realise (the actor even noticed the character was going down the toilet and every time they just kill him off til he gets his patience back and they can write better episodes for him).
The real MVP and person who is really inspiring me atm is Major (nee Captain) Dr Samantha Carter who is an astrophysicist and engineer in the US air force and is the token woman of the cast. She also happens to be the smartest one on the team. Even her commanding officers know she is far superior to her when it comes to…well…most things.
Maybe its transitioning that made me identify more with the token woman on the team but she has a passion that is genuinely infectious and i hate the 90s/00s for the way they did her dirty in their characterisation of her.
When on Earth she’s rarely ever shown outside the secret air force facility known as Stargate Command (SGC) and when she is its usually do show how drab her personal life is - her house is tidy largely cuz she is never there and it doesn’t feel lived in. When her and the rest of her team (SG-1) get down time, she doesn’t really leave the base (when she does try to take a break off base is when smth usually goes wrong for her like getting stalked by an omnicient alien or getting kidnapped by a dying billionaire), with her tinkering with some alien technology in her lab.
Whenever someone says she needs to get out and take a proper break, she states “this does relax me, sir” and its painted as a bad thing, but is it actually a bad thing?
Get to the point
Thats the problem tho init when ur hobby and ur passion and ur job are all the same thing. Being an artist-researcher-historian-whatever i find the things that i want to do to relax look like work.
I love art and i love seeing it and reading about it or watching documentaries on it, the same with history. Like watching a period drama cuz there is smth relevant to my research isn’t just work, its also gonna relax me.
Sometimes drawing or writing to get the thoughts and ideas out of my head is the relaxing thing, just like Samantha Carter tinkering with some alien device on her annual leave is relaxing to her.
Passion can relax u and reinvigorate u. Passion can be like a controlled forest fire (as i write this an uplifting key change is happening in Boyzone’s cover of Words) and cleanse u to make way for future passion and energy.
Seeing Carter be passionate and not give a flying fuck made me feel refreshed that someone was doing the same thing i do (albiet more complex and in a sci-fi universe) and that i can be happy and passionate and do the thing i want to without worrying too much about what an institution thinks and whether my friends think i’m relaxing or just a workaholic
What all that translates to is me kinda being done with institutional projects for a while cuz they honestly beat the passion out of me with how unimaginative and unable they are to understand anything not on their sad, boring level
(#NotAllInstitutions tho) and doing stuff on my own for me is what has been revitalising me and giving me my passion back
So u can look forward to more messy writing and messy drawing and other random messy creative shit and definitely less institutional stuff, at least until i get my creative flame back to the roaring bonfire it was when i started this new chapter like a few years ago
