“Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.” So goes the intros to one of America’s most beloved soap operas,Days of our Lives. It always comes to mind when it’s time to finish something and start something new. Yes, it somehow supercedes both “Sunrise, Sunset” from Fiddler on the Roof and “Closing Time” by Semisonic. The latter two are perhaps superior and less archaic examples, but the hourglass analogy has a sense of timeless poetry.
Observe.
When the sands finally reach the bottom of the hourglass, it’s time to flip that mother over and start something new. Like ending one webcomic and starting a new one. Interestingly, though, while the march of time is new, the contents therein, like those grains of sand, do not change. Sure, the presentation may be different. The swirl pattern of the sand may be different this time. But every person is hardwired to the same themes, which were formed as they were over a culmination of life’s experiences. These are fundamentally unalterable. So the new march goes on with cues that are new yet strangely familiar.
That’s the case with John Allison’s Bad Machinery, the successor to Scary Go Round (which itself was the successor to an earlier work, Bobbins). Everyone knew it was time to flip that hourglass and start something knew. Allison himself admitted as much on the comments section here that Scary Go Round was getting stale.
But amidst the changes … familiarity.
