Electric Ghosts and Karaoke Light: Tesla, Time Travel, and the Strange Power of Song

Lauren Nixon-Matney • March 1, 2026
Electric Ghosts and Karaoke Light: Tesla, Time Travel, and the Strange Power of Song

Tears for Fears: Everybody Wants To Rule The World

Film: Tesla

Retro-style illustration of Nikola Tesla singing into a microphone with electric lightning radiating behind him, set in a star-filled night sky. Subtle faded images of a mother and child and a father dancing with a daughter appear in the background. Title text reads “Electric Ghosts and Karaoke Light: Tesla, Time Travel, and the Strange Power of Song” from the Searching for Stars series.

I don’t remember the first time I heard the name Tesla.

Not in school, not in science class, not from any textbook or documentary.


I remember it through my dad.


I was a kid, sitting cross-legged somewhere in the background while he and his friend Jimmy talked for hours about everything: conspiracies, inventions, God, psychology, space, energy, ancient symbols, the Book of Enoch. Big ideas. Flashlight-in-the-dark kind of conversations. And somewhere in that galaxy of words, Tesla was there.


I didn’t know who he was, but I knew he mattered.

You could hear it in my dad’s voice how he said his name like it was secret knowledge, like he was passing something sacred down just by mentioning him.


That’s the kind of man my dad was.

He didn’t hand you answers he dropped you breadcrumbs.

Let the spark catch on its own.


And I remember one night, sitting around that table, him saying:


“Money’s a necessary evil. It rules the world.

And if you want to understand why things break why good people get crushed 

start there.”



I didn’t know it then, but he was talking about Tesla.

About the way the world chews up the ones who just want to help.



I don’t think we ever really learned about Tesla in school.

Perhaps a bit in Mrs. Turner’s class one of the few teachers who truly understood both science and art. The kind of woman who slipped in names that might’ve otherwise been erased. Maybe that was part of her light: making sure the right people weren’t forgotten.


But the real lessons didn’t come in a classroom.

They came in fragments.

In memories. In wonder. In sparks.



In 2010, Jamie and I moved to Hot Springs Arkansas… freshly married, full of hope, chasing beauty in the trees. Around the corner from our house was Mid-America Science Center. That became our sanctuary. One of the first places we visited.


And there it was.

The Tesla theater.


I stood there, staring up at it, and it was like something rewired in me.

A name from childhood. A thread that lit back up.

I didn’t know everything about him yet… not even close.

But I remembered the weight in my dad’s voice.

And I remembered the feeling: This man mattered.


Later, when our son Jaxon was born, we bought a membership and went all the time. He loved it as much as I did. We watched the center grow with us adding skywalks, dinosaur trails, new exhibits. It was like the building was evolving as we were. And every time we passed the Tesla theater, I’d feel that hum again. That pull.




By the time 2021 rolled around, the world had broken wide open… raw and oozing at the seams.

We were still deep in the weirdness of COVID. Still searching for light through the fog.


And then my dad died in October.


I don’t know how else to say it, losing him fucking broke me.

The first year was the hardest. I cried every single day.

And I remember asking myself: Am I going to cry every day for the rest of my life?

I didn’t know grief would feel like this. Like breathing through static. Like never quite plugging back in.


A few months later, Jamie and I watched Tesla.


It was one of those nights where the kids were asleep and we were just scrolling, letting the algorithm guide us. Ethan Hawke. Tesla. I clicked without thinking. I figured it might be interesting. I wasn’t prepared for what it would feel like.



The movie wasn’t like any other biopic I’d ever seen.

It wasn’t a timeline it was a dream.

Half history, half hallucination. Soft edges. Unfinished truths.

And in the middle of all of it, there was this scene.


Tesla, played so delicately, so quietly by Ethan Hawke

walks up to a microphone.

And starts singing.


“Acting on your best behavior…

Turn your back on Mother Nature…

Everybody wants to rule the world…”


And something in me shattered and orbited around my body.


He didn’t belt it. He didn’t perform. He just… sang.

Like a man from another world trying to make sense of this one.



That scene wrecked me in a way I didn’t expect… in the most beautiful way! 

Not because of the novelty or strangeness of it,

but because I felt like I was watching a ghost sing the song we never let him finish.


He didn’t want to rule the world.

He wanted to light it.

He wanted to give power away, not hoard it.

To build something that freed people, not bound them.


He was laughed at, stolen from, crushed under the weight of greed.

A man born to bring light buried by men who only wanted to own it.



He will be a child of light.


That’s what they say Tesla’s mother said the night he was born.

Story I heard was there was a storm raging, lightning crashing, they said it was a bad omen. But she looked down at her newborn son, full of faith, full of hope, full of love and said, “He will be a child of light.”


I didn’t just think of Tesla in that moment.

I thought of my dad.

I thought of my son.


My little math genius.

He’s been multiplying since he was two. Talks about time travel like it’s a thing we might actually relatively explore someday! 


He’s learned about Tesla mostly through bedtime talks and little homeschool moments.

One of his favorites was an episode of Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum, 

a super adorable PBS Kids show we’ve watched oh so many times, where time-traveling kids meet real heroes from the past. In one, they meet Tesla.

It’s cartoonish and fun, but something seemed to shift in him after it. His eyes lit up like a switch had flipped… like the light recognized itself.


He asks big questions. Wants to invent things. Wants to travel through time. Wants to help people. Wants to understand everything. Wants to shine.


And I look at him and think to myself I know what she meant.


Because I know what it’s like to raise voltage.

To witness it.

To protect it.

To pray the world doesn’t short-circuit it.



Tesla wasn’t asking to be seen.

He wasn’t shouting look at me.

He was whispering look what’s possible.


And maybe that’s why it hurts so much.

Because we didn’t just forget him.

We failed him.


But I believe this:

Light always finds its way.


Even when it’s buried. Even when it’s stolen. Even when it’s mocked.

It finds a way back in.



That zany beautiful karaoke scene hasn’t left me.

It hums in my mind sometimes when I’m watching my son solve a problem.

When I’m looking at the stars.

When I’m wondering what else we’ve lost to time, to greed. 


And maybe it haunts me the way it does because of the song itself.


“Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by Tears for Fears

a song that’s floated through so many eras, so many minds,

always asking the same quiet question about power and consequence.

It’s dreamy and sharp, soft-edged but warning.

It feels like prophecy sung through synth and sorrow.


And in Tesla, it becomes something else entirely.

Not just a soundtrack, but a spell.

A lament. A final, flickering broadcast from a man the world couldn’t hold.


It wasn’t just a movie scene.

It was a message.

A flicker.

A reminder.


And maybe this isn’t a story.

Maybe it’s a thank-you.

A reckoning.

A promise to remember.


To light the dark.

To keep singing.

Even when the world forgets the words.


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