Losing Your Grip: Just Some Notes

[lucfrench@aol.com (LucFrench)]

Here's some notes after playing through Losing Your Grip. I'm not related to
the bookclub, I just wrote this out, and thought ya'll might be interested in a
short series of thoughts.

Obvious symbols:
The Head in the Ground: Terry's conscience. Come on, the Jimney Cricket line
gave that one away completely.
The Grey Man: Terry's guilt and fears.
The puppy: Deux ex machina with a tail.
The Fairies: Fantasy.
Jefrey and Marie: Mr. Intuition, and Ms. Logic. I would think they'd be more
iconic if the were the other way around, but then, I think that "giant flaming
head" is an interesting turn of phrase.

Symbols I'm guessing at:
The Spheres: Stand-alone memories of individual moments.
Why The Spheres were Buried: They, unlike the Head, were only buried recently,
IMHO. The drugs were repressing Terry's memories at first.
The Barrier: Terry's self-awareness.
The Sludge: Guilt and fear. IMHO, is the unformed version of the grey man.
The Black Sphere: The memory of going to the clinic. (It's implied that it is
an Evil memory, though, (the monkeys), so it might be something left
undescribed in the game.)
The Avalanche: I'm a literalist, so I'm going to say that the avalanche is the
oncoming rush of unconsciousness from the drugs. Without his self-awareness,
Terry would not have the willpower to wake up, and would probably slip into a
coma, or death.
Both Jefrey and Marie's sequences are well within the given setup, but Jefrey's
reveals one thing of interest, mentioned in the Black Sphere entry.
The Father: Not quite so much a symbol as a twisted memory. The strings scene
makes this point of view explicit. Or, if you prefer, "Diabolic ex machina with
a cigarette."
The Strings: To quote a dream I once had, "Hey, it's your memory. You can twist
it any way you want. I'm just following your lead." Or was that a TV show? Or a
movie? Or me manufacturing a quote so I could move on?

Overall structure:
1. Awaken the past.
2. Change the past. (?)
3. Understand the past.
4. Balance your mind.
5. Confront your past.
(Now, which one sticks out as not belonging?)

Tangential notes:
All the fits open with quotes from self contained bands (i.e., they write their
own material) or Peter Gabriel. (Jars of Clay, Rush, Pink Floyd, Trout Fishing
in America (the only one I've never heard of), and, yes, Peter Gabriel.)
The meaning of the word "fit" have two meanings, depending on how you look at
it; The Hunting of The Snark had the subtitle "An Agony in Eight Fits" (each
chapter was called a Fit). Also, a seizure can be called a fit. Both
references, er, fit.
I named the puppy "Dog", like I always do when given that opportunity in a
game.
I also liked how the puppy responded to your choice between a cat and a dog.
Talk about prescience. The whole X STRINGS ending was written before the first
showing of, but feels very strongly like, the opening sequence of Being John
Malkovich.
Was all this just so Terry could quit smoking? Jeeze, maybe he should've tried
just cutting down instead.

Thanks
Luc "Lists of Lists" French