Rob Dickins
Charlie Chalk the Psychonaut
Do you remember Charlie Chalk? You might have been lucky enough to see the 80’s cartoon, or perhaps you might have caught a glimpse of this psychedelic clown at a certain restaurant chain a few years back. If not, after you’ve read this, at least go and listen to the theme song. Dare I say? I do. Classic.
Even in the most macho, sledge-hammering moments of my life, I’ve been caught singing: “Charlie Chalk, Charlie Chalk, he’s got a funny way of walking and a wacky way of chalking, Charlie Chalk.” As you can imagine then, it was with a child-like excitement that I popped on the complete DVD, before posting it to my niece for her birthday. If you’ll believe that.
I was in awe, ready to see Charlie in action again, in full flip, leap and spring, across the TV screen. I braced myself to re-enter my childhood for an hour or two, losing myself in mindless innocence and blushing, virginal unreality. How naïve I still am. Like my recent Hobbit regress; the creative impression was far from innocent.
Slightly inebriated and watching through my thick adult peepers, Charlie’s adventures began to take on the semblance of a very sinister struggle; his slow resignation to the familiar.
The story unfolded anew.
Charlie woke up, adrift a strange island called Merrytwit after a long ontological sleep; he’d only gone sailing to do “a little fishin’” and “a little sleepin’”.
Undeterred by his predicament, he ventured forth and met a host of ego-derived archetypes. The lazy ape and the pedant duck, the anal captain and of course, the pièce de résistance, the clumsy, chicken-shit pink elephant. All of them offering crappy advice to the newly stranded sailor of the mind – Charlie Chalk the psychonaut.
Charlie was a hero though. He knew how to handle himself. He took the whole experience head on, always with a smile and a mellow scratch of his noggin’. The archetypes couldn’t organize a party in a brewery. They needed Charlie. He not only focused them, pulling the island together as a functioning whole but he gave them reason – something not even the bossy Captain Mildred could do.
You see, all the flipping and leaping was just the façade of a working clown; like his hands he carried it with him wherever he went. You see, that noggin’ scratch was the key, the key that allowed Charlie to overcome the trials and tribulations of the bizarre state-of-mind that was Merrytwit. Whether it was finding the perfect spot for his home or dealing with a moaning mountain; Charlie thrived on tackling the basic problems of existence.
The equipment with which to tackle every problem was always to be found somewhere on Merrytwit, waiting to be found and utilized. When in doubt, Charlie could even go to Trader Jones’s outpost – no money accepted, trade only – and dip into its wealth of tools. Trader Jones even had a cure for chronic sneezing – a veritable green and bubbling broth served in a cup and saucer.
Now, you might be wondering why I called his adventures sinister. I mean, it’s not as if I thought like that twenty years ago but it’s different now. “You’re lost Charlie! What about the circus?” I’d shouted at the television. He never seemed to care though. Then, in the last episode, he finally decided to leave because of a savage bout of home-sickness.
I was relieved; the psychonaut was sailing again… only to fall once more into a deep ontological sleep. Once again he unwittingly stranded himself on Merrytwit, with the archetypes of the ego. He decided, with the ironic cheer of a clown, to remain there. The sinister resignation of the familiar, which had formed from the very first episode, had finally come to fruition. In the end, Charlie happily resigned himself to the idyll.