Childe Roland to the Dark....I mean Dubai Tower Came

My first thought was, he lied in every word,
That hoary cripple, with malicious eye
Askance to watch the working of his lie
On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
Suppression of the glee, that purs’d and scor’d
Its edge, at one more victim gain’d thereby.

From Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, by Robert Browning 1855



The poem that inspired the seven book long story written by Steven King was itself inspired by Shakespeare's King Lear. The reference to the Dark Tower in King Lear was inspired by even older folk tales and legends.

The Dark Tower is a linchpin which holds together (and keeps separate) alternate realities. In the series of novels, the hero Roland Deschain is on a quest to find and enter the Dark Tower, which holds the answers to all questions. In the third novel entitled "the Wastelands", we find out the Dark Tower sits in a land called Thuderclap amid a field of Roses, and that the tower exists in all realities. In the reality that Roland's companion Jake comes from (New York City, 1977), the Dark Tower is a rose. In book five we find out that the nemesis who is trying to keep Roland and his companions from reaching the Dark Tower has the ability to use weaponry from neighboring realities which have manifested in our reality as books, comics, and movies. (Robots with Dr. Doom armor, light sabers, and sneeches from Harry Potter.) By the sixth book the characters realize that they are characters in a book, and two of them travel to "Keystone" (the real?) Earth and meet Stephen King.



So what does the Dark Tower look like? Difficult to say. It's image seems to change from book to book.

Today I was reading a post from the Secret Sun in which the Dubai Tower is mentioned. I followed the Wiki link, and when I saw it my thoughts instantly went to the Dark Tower, without knowing why. It just seemed like a morph of all the images I had seen of the "fictional" Dark Tower.



Reading the Wiki entry, this captured my eye.

Burj Dubai (Arabic: برج دبي‎ "Dubai Tower") is a supertall skyscraper under construction in the Business Bay district of Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and is the tallest man-made structure ever built, despite being incomplete. Construction began on September 21, 2004 and is expected to be completed and ready for occupation in September 2009

I did another quick wiki check, and sure enough,

The Dark Tower is the seventh and final book of novelist Stephen King's Dark Tower series, published September 21, 2004 (King's birthday) by Donald M. Grant, Publisher, Inc., and illustrated by Michael Whelan. The subtitle of this novel is REPRODUCTION REVELATION REDEMPTION RESUMPTION.

The Dark Tower, which is the final novel in the series was published September 21, 2004, which is the very day construction began on the Dubai Tower.

Remember my saying that in one of the realities in the novels the Dark Tower was a rose? The Dubai Tower is modeled after the Hymenocallis, which is a type of flower.

This plant is the foundation of the design for the Burj Dubai in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.The Burj Dubai will become the world's tallest building once completed in late 2008.

Of course it would be insane for me to say a fictional tower which has been talked about in stories for at least a thousand years is currently being built in Dubai, but the synchs cannot be denied.

Six o'clock - TV hour. Don't get caught in foreign tower. Slash and burn,
return, listen to yourself churn. Lock him in uniform and book burning,
blood letting. Every motive escalate. Automotive incinerate. Light a candle,
light a motive. Step down, step down. Watch a heel crush, crush. Uh oh,
this means no fear - cavalier. Renegade and steer clear! A tournament,
a tournament, a tournament of lies. Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives
and I decline.

From "It's the End of the World as we Know it" by REM