Walking down the streets of Manhattan almost gave the feeling of being in any big city, dirty streets, smelly air and a vague feeling that some kind of energy was present here that you had to come to the city to really feel. Hell, this could be Boston I thought for a second. A few minutes more walking proved me wrong, this was not fucking Boston. Giant screens flashed images engineered in some marketing laboratory by serious students of base human desire. Sex, money, fun, clothes, pleasure, brutality, straight lines and retouched photos, bikinis, fast food, neon blue green indigo violet flashing flashing flashing. It proved to be ineffective after about an hour of trying to absorb and process as much as possible, grasping to feel the experience that this capitalist sacred ground was designed to create. I found myself frazzled and desensitized, mentally unable to feel any excitement, barely able to complete rational thoughts, vaguely wondering how human beings live here.
Although we only spent about 2 hours actually in Manhattan, we did what we set out to do. We had lived a microcosm of what I imagine the immigrant experience is like. Driving all night and spending all our money to get to this place, this idea, this intangible thing that was important to us simply because it made itself important. And there it was: gleaming, shiny, ethereal, and really just a bunch of glowy signs. At the same time that all these ads represented such powerful ideas and gleamed of importance, these ideas were not reality. I was not drinking coke, don't watch CBS, and probably won't go see the Green Lantern. We all choose the lens through which to see the world, whether you let an ad manipulate you, decide it turns you off to the product, or treat it indifferently. The power to shape reality is in people, in physical action, not in semantics or flashy dream worlds. I am no longer intimidated.
