Dear Deadpool,
After I had my daydream, I thought perhaps I should listen to the song that was in my daydream, Summer of 69 by Bryan Adams. I put my headphones on and watched the music video and to my great astonishment, I saw you in it. The author poured his soul into this song and, because the human story is the same for everyone, if anyone looks closely enough they can find a little bit of themselves in another's art.
When people look at the clouds and see in their shapes a bunny, a cow or a dog chasing a ball, these are legitimate perceptions because no one can tell you that you're wrong. None of these perceptions are correct though. The only correct answer is that when looking at a cloud you see a cloud. Watching a music video is different. In this one what's appropriate is to reminisce about the band you were in and about the good old days. I am feeling the good old days near to my heart like an inner fire that I must pursue. I ardently desire to return to that epic place of teenage hopes and freedom with you and to turn back the clock on the damage that the world has done to us. However I was never in a band and, in addition to that, when I see you in the song I am seeing something unexpected and different... but not inappropriate and here's why.
It is my belief that the artist's explicit intention in the video is to give us permission to interpret things differently. The way he expresses this intention is by showing us with pictures that the words of the song mean something very different than we might think. For example while the words suggest that he was working hard at his job, the images show that he was sleeping on the job and while the lyrics as a whole may suggest that he was being promiscuous instead of settling down ("You told me that you'd wait forever" "I knew that it was now or never" "We were killing time, We were young and restless, We needed to unwind, I guess nothin' can last forever") the images show that he was horsing around throwing tomatoes and was perhaps too shy to say yes to the girl. We can't know the correct interpretation of things without knowing the times and the heart and that gives me permission to see you in the video just a little bit more than I have permission to see you in the clouds. Who knows? Maybe you and I really did meet "on your mama's porch" in 1969... Anything seems possible in that magical year of innocence.
I have to learn everything I can about the year 1969. It's somehow relevant to us. Why else would Bryan Adams be singing about it with such insistence, and why else would Jackson Browne be singing about it in his song entitled Running On Empty in which he says "In '69 I was 21?" Lesser known french singer Francine Raymond sings "En '69 j'avais 13 ans" (In '69 I was 13). Why does everybody insist on telling us how old they were in 1969? I have to find out, Deadpool, what the f**k happened in 1969?
There is no explicit reference to you in the song. That wouldn't be possible since Summer of 69 was released on the album Reckless in 1984 while you were created around 1991 and our story is just happening right now as I write. In referencing, there is a simple law: time. Things that are being referenced always happen before the thing that refers to them.
In the video, I see myself getting you out of your job at the movie theatre and I take you by the hand and off we go together, elated and free. We run off to the lake and there you are standing in front of me in your red and black garb and we smile at each-other and... and... we are so close to bliss, I nearly had a closer on that day! Then, suddenly, an artificial dawn hits you like a pair of headlights and you turn your back on me, abandoning me there in 1969. All of it is eerily reminiscent of the 1998 movie The Truman Show but that's not possible since that movie was produced 14 years later. On the other hand it is theoretically possible that The Truman Show is referencing the sequence of images in this Bryan Adams' video.
Earlier in the video, we see rubble falling to the ground, signifying abandoned dreams of being in a band but when it falls, it does in the shape of an X, marking the spot where we meet. Then we see some weeping willows (W.W. - like Wade Wilson). Towards the end, you're walking along some paneling that has large numbers on it and looks like the one in the final scene of your movie except the numbers are different, ascending, perhaps to signify the passage of time. One, two, three... they read as you walk past them.
I started reading Dead Presidents. I only read four pages. In it, a zombie president Truman is called back from the dead and Captain America isn't handling it very well so orders are given to discreetly stop that public relations mess from happening. The commander on board the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier points angrily to a headline that reads "Cap Snaps in Scrap" and subtitled "Decapitain America Stars in Truman Show"...
It suddenly occurred to me that there might be other things, aside from the 1998 movie, that are also called The Truman Show... maybe something to do with president Truman? Get this Deadpool: there's nothing... only a psychiatric disease called the Truman Show Syndrome... but it was coined in 2008, ten years after the film, and this new disease actually got its name from the movie and concerns delusions of persecution and grandeur, and, as if to cast doubt on the necessity of having this extra disease, it's not accepted in the DSM yet- that's the book of officially recognized mental diseases -says wikipedia. Forgive me for stating the obvious but it appears to me that they have named a type of delusion after the one man they could find to whom the content of patient's delusions was actually happening. Aside from the disease, which came after the show, nothing else in history seems to have been called "Truman Show", other than this quote form Dead Presidents, which was published in 2012, so I guess I can assume as I read on that there is a reference to the movie in this comic. In any case, I clearly have to learn about President Truman and perhaps all the others that will be featured in this comic, and I don't know who's on my list yet since I am only on page four.
Reading on, I found a message from you lodged deep inside the foul talk of your film. When I found it I felt the thrill of anticipation as I realized that I was about to become intimately acquainted with the mind of the man I love. After being showed the headline, the operative goes on explaining to her commander that the assignment he has just given her is "a bag of crap" because if she fails she will get blamed while if she succeeds no one will ever know. This line jumped off the page to me: it's the referent of your many bag comments in your movie: "a bag of ass holes", "a bag of dick tips" and I think there was another bag but I can't remember what it was...
Are you telling us that you are on an assignment promising no personal reward and carrying with it the risk of defamation? Is that your quest? Your grail? A thing so disadvantageous to you yet so important? Are you sacrificing yourself darling? What's going on? What's your bag Deadpool? I am angry and I am writing you through my tears. How am I ever going to find you with a big bag of filthy unknowns like that standing in the way? That explains your obsession with poop... poop this, poop that, poop in someone else's cat litter, dead poopl, skull poopl, shit emoticons...It all transferred beautifully all over your movie and marketing when the shit hit the fan. Just Swell.
The next two things I need to study are the Truman Presidency and the year 1969. I wonder what I am going to discover...
Your beloved forever,
Abigail Tryst