Ticket to Anywhere

The quick, bright shapes of the sun retreat below the horizon. We watch the retreat on a hill, while vague pinks and purples spread out into the long New York night. It smells like grass and twilight. We see the last yellow blush of the sun vanishing, imperceptibly.

On one hand, the sunset, idyllic, is of nature, spontaneous, tangible, it is everything; on the other, it is just a drabber version of what has flashed in front of my eyes many times before, either in miniature on hotel postcards or in technicolor on the screens at the cineplex.

At a greater rate than ever before, the experiences we have day-to-day are synthetic. They are the digital images and interpretative commentaries that multiply forward in geometric procession. By way of these images and commentaries , we were there to meet the suicide militant in Pakistan or to check the Nuclear reactors in North Korea. We were there, but not like sitting on the grass to watch a sunset: The event was in two dimension on our television, computer, newspaper, it was manufactured and deliberate, related but ultimately divorced from reality. Our experience was a product of human hands, designed to satisfy our appetite for the illusory and fantastic.

At least one effect of these synthetic experiences on our consciousness is that living in this world becomes more and more each day like flipping through the pages of a magazine. Everything we might see beyond our stoop self-references something that we have already “lived” through. Even our emotions: are we really angry that Sally kissed Joey after she kissed Tom? Or are we acting as we think we ought to, in line with our favorite soap opera or tabloid story. Few things are left unseen; few emotions are left unexplored. Life becomes more like a continuous rerun of forms and color, like a sunset that we’ve all seen not once, but a thousand times before, embalmed in some electronic medium, airbrushed and perfect.

For better or worse, in a world where natural novelty and surprise have all but expired, the burden to enliven our lives shifts from God and His spontaneous will to mankind itself – to the cinematographers and studio executives who we expect nightly to channel into our humdrum living rooms the extraordinary. We are the merchants of our own illusions, who must sieze for ourselves what is worthy. In a world of reruns, no price is too high for a new sensation.

19^th Century industrial workers knew that the quickest route out of Manchester was at the bottom of the bottle. The escape is now is to be found in our televisions sets and internet portals, in our drugs, parties, pornography, George Lucas' studio. Or, for privileged, who might tire of two dimensional images and seedy opium dens, go build a house in Nicaragua – don’t forget your sunglasses! – where, for a few grand, and a few days, one can feel the pangs of human sadness and the elation of missionary salvation. Yes, it's the greatest show in town. Next stop? Under the ocean to the ruin of the titanic? The moon? There is only one simple rule! The rule of perpetual motion: where you are not is probably better than where you are, because new is better than old, and nothing is worth more than a new sensation.