HAN SOLO

Last night I watched The Empire Strikes Back with the kids. 

And I felt a forgotten anxiety reawaken from long ago. A huge and bewildering fretfulness from a wet night in Bradford in 1980. For the previous three years the Star Wars characters had sustained my imagination, the templates for countless games and flights of fancy, more real than any earth-bound contemporaries. But sat in the Odeon that night with my two older sisters, I witnessed them falling apart.

I saw the princess putting more energy into avoiding Han’s flirtatious advances than the swarms of tie fighters pursuing them through the asteroids. I saw Luke fail miserably to complete his Jedi training, and then I saw him lose a hand. But worst, I saw Han shipped off to God knows where, frozen in a block of carbonite. And as the closing scenes played out, it became horribly apparent they weren’t going to get him back before the end. And at that moment, 1983 seemed an eternity away.

Since then my family, like the imperial star fleet, has dispersed across the galaxy. Me and my sisters have gone our separate ways and grown apart. My father is dead. I no longer live in Yorkshire and the people who populated my youth have faded into the past.

And I wonder whether the significance of Empire was that it was was a taste of things to come. Because perhaps the first person I ever lost, was Han Solo.



More thoughts on Star Wars: Whose Star Wars?   Pantone 291   Space Shoddity

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