What I was doing was creating a horizontal species — not a genus of any one species of booze but a palate, a flavor profile, that runs across the different verticals. Music and film, of course, use this horizontal mood mapping: if you like this music, you’ll like this other music that’s dark, drone, and contemplative.
I just watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind for the first time in over 30 years with my son of seven. Throughout the film, as is his way, the boy kept leaping to conclusions of what would happen next: the army guys are gonna try to kill that guy; the army guys are gonna try and kill the aliens; the aliens are gonna try and kill the army.
The hit, every hit, is explosive in its turn, setting the engine in motion. The game hums along and then: BAM! Everyone adjusts, everything shifts, affording the game this odd, syncopated, disjunctive rhythm.
The dramatic arc of the film is built around what appears to be an irony: the guy incapable of friendship builds the most successful social networking site built on “friends.” Indeed, there is an undercurrent of critique of social media, that it is alienating, that the friendships are false, that all those Facebook “friends” are built on the misanthropy of one man.
The world is folded in upon itself. As Marshal McLuhan noted ages ago, the electronic age ushers in the global village. And MyFreeCams.com is a global village. As night falls and I ready for bed, women in the Philippines are just rising. I see the early sun pouring through their windows; I hear roosters crowing; I see her eat her Philippine breakfast.
When we get home, things are no better. Both husband and wife must work now: more more more more. So both are exhausted and dehydrated from their day. The kids are wiped out from being abused at school — made to sit in chairs and memorize nonsense. It is not a pleasant scene.
The show never succumbs to the reigning model of parenting in which parents sacrifice their lives, their desires, individuality, their sexuality in order to provide their children with an anesthetized existence. Nancy doesn’t Purell her kids.
Let’s talk about alarm clocks. I understand the need for them. But to have to wake up five mornings a week to the shrill scream of an alarm is downright tortuous. I mean, if we need to set alarms every morning in order to wake up in time to get to work, then aren’t we doing something wrong? Doesn’t this seem obvious?
Let me be clear. I am not talking about pleasure. Capitalism offers all sorts of pleasure. That is its promise: the pleasure of the hamburger, new shoes, leather interiors, better handling, a larger screen, the Big Gulp, sharper focus, pill induced sleep, the weekend, arugula. This is the genius of capitalism — it creates the desire and the gratification.
To me, it was like everyone around me suddenly went totally nuts. Here were all these people going to absurd jobs for 50, 60, 70 hours a week — just to make their rent. Nobody looked very happy. But they did look, well, possesed. I mean here, in San Francisco, everybody went from being a psychedelic artist slacker to all of a sudden talking about brand engagement, apps and back ends, driving traffic and conversion rates; everyone had a goddamn business plan and a crackberry.