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- British rock band Queen releases the single Bohemian Rhapsody in their studio album A Night at the Opera, becoming the best-selling album of the 1970s;
- The crew of Apollo-Soyuz, the first-ever mission to space with an international crew, originating from the United States and the Soviet Union
- President of the United States Gerald Ford survives two assassination attempts in September 1975, one in Sacramento by Lynette Fromme and another one in San Francisco by Sara Jane Moore;
- An alleged high-altitude observation balloon originating from China is detected in U.S. airspace;
- Remains of Titan, a submersible that notoriously imploded during an expedition to view the wreck of the Titanic;
- Azerbaijani soldiers locked in combat in Nagorno-Karabakh amidst an Azerbaijani offensive that caused the dissolution of the Republic of Artsakh and the flight of Armenians from the region;
- Israel invades the Gaza Strip in retaliation for the attack on October 7 by militant group Hamas, starting a war between them;
- 7.8 and 7.5 magnitude earthquakes strike Syria and Turkey, leaving up to 62,000 dead and 121,000 injured.
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2025 collage
- In January, destructive wildfires affect the Los Angeles metropolitan area, killing 61 people and burning 57,000 acres;
- Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time after his victory in the 2024 United States presidential election, beginning his momentous second presidency;
- an earthquake kills 6,000 people in Myanmar and Thailand;
- Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church since 2013, dies at the age of 88. Pope Leo XIV is inaugurated as the new pope after the 2025 papal conclave;
- Air India Flight 171 crashes in Ahmedabad, India, killing 241 people on board with a sole survivor, and killing 28 people on the ground;
- during negotiations between the United States and Iran to end the Iranian nuclear program, Israel bombards Iran with missiles, killing 78 people including high-ranking Iranian military generals and nuclear scientists;
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COLLAGE FOR YEAR NINETEEN-EIGHTY
- The Iran hostage crisis continued all throughout the year, motivating rescue missions. With assistance from Canada, six hostages are rescued, with CIA officer Tony Mendez and President of the United States Jimmy Carter managing;
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Origin
editDashiell has reported that he discovered music by The Caretaker in early 2022. His interest in researching Alzheimer's disease led him to discover the album series Everywhere at the End of Time. Reportedly, the idea for writing a book based on Dashiell’s interpretation of the album was cultivated. Although an 11-year-old Dashiell began writing it in a notebook soon after, he soon abandoned the project, and the incomplete book has been lost. Dashiell has since praised Everywhere for “shaping him into the man he is today” and one of his favorite albums of all time.
In summer of 2022, Dashiell discovered the Caretaker’s earliest projects, Selected Memories from the Haunted Ballroom (1999), A Stairway to the Stars (2001) and We'll All Go Riding on a Rainbow (2003), the three experimental albums used in The Haunted Ballroom. Dashiell has mentioned that the albums “completely blew his mind” and that he would listen to them recreationally.
Original story
editThe screenplays produced by Dashiell in 2022 and 2023 have been analyzed extensively, but have drawn criticism for their nonsensical story and ominous dialogue. Nevertheless, they are considered to be the groundwork for Dashiell’s future writings. Most of the writing on the scripts are color-coded to match the album covers of the Caretaker’s work.
First track
editThe first iteration for the screenplay of the first track in Selected Memories, “The Haunted Ballroom” was possibly completed in August 2022 or earlier. The lost screenplay allegedly involved Edmund (or possibly, Esmund) in a ballroom having a violent mental breakdown with persistent hallucinations preventing him from exiting. It continues for almost four minutes and only ends when Edmund is so overwhelmed that he faints. It is possibly the first-ever written screenplay for the Haunted Ballroom. The second iteration was developed by Dashiell in September 2022 and is currently displayed in the Museum of Fine Arts in New York City. It involves Edmund entering the ballroom and encountering a ghostly bartender named Jameson. Edmund asks not for a drink but for help overcoming his existential fears about life and death. They later discuss Edmund’s post-traumatic stress disorder from his experiences in the Second World War six years prior, and Edmund expresses his love for his wife, Maurice. At the end of the script, Jameson vanishes from the ballroom as if he were never there; however, Edmund “does not seem to notice” this and continues talking to nobody, and the scene closes as the camera fades out.
Another incomplete iteration of the first track was found, possibly written by Dashiell in 2023; in this one, Edmund walks into the ballroom and encounters the bartender in the dead of night. Edmund asks Jameson what he thinks happens after death, and he responds by saying it does not matter because everyone is doomed to be forgotten; the two agree that all organized religion is futile and the idea of a god is absurd. The screenplays have been analyzed as being part of Dashiell’s unprofessional early attempts at storytelling, and the dialogue has been described as “overly dreadful”, or even “shockingly philosophical” and “pure existential anguish”. Dashiell himself has described the despairing conversation between Edmund and Jameson as a projection of his own existential crisis at the time.