Derek,This reminds me of something that seems to h...

2006-10-31T10:34:00.000-05:00

Derek,

This reminds me of something that seems to happen often in NY ... a place you live in is transmogrified for a movie that you later see.

The funny thing is how the movie transforms the place, even for those of us who had been living in the place well before the movie came (and went). For example, there is a strange little triangular block down in the Village that always just seemed quirky. One day a white truck was parked there with a giant hole in its side. The edges of the hole were smoking. Walking past, and peeking inside the truck, I saw a bunch of those disposable charcol grills (NY'ers know and love these things) making smoke.

Strange, I thought. But somehow not so out of character for this little space.

Then, months later while watching Men in Black ... there it was! Who knew the hole in the truck was "actually" caused by an alien ray gun or some such silly thing!

Now, I just can't go by that area again without some sort of gnawing trepidation that I might get zapped. The place's doppelgänger, alternate universe has intersected with my own. And in my experience of the spot, it seems life is again imitating (or at least reflecting) art. The filmed experience melds with the real and changes its character and meaning. This happens all the time in NYC.

And now, one more example that's sort of the inverse of this ... I was in Manhattan working on 9/11 when the twin towers fell. I watched it from my office rooftop. Not able really to summon a sense of the obviously required pathos because I was watching it in the real world, with all the blue sky and warm air kind of dwarfing the awful spectacle not so far away. All it took was a tiny shift of my eyes down to the street below (31st street) to see life going on ... cabs, people walking about, etc., or up to the sky to see a "beautiful day."

I did not realize at that time, until much later actually, that everyone else in the country (the world, in fact), experienced this event mediated by the television screen, and situated within the theater of the serious. What TV crew in their right mind would let their lens wander to the ordinary, as my eyes had done?

So, for most other people, the filmed and mediated experience has constructed a much more intensely focused and horrifying narrative than the direct observation of the real event evoked. (Granted, those who were closer than I was probably have a very different take on this.) Afterward, I was initially surprised at the intensity of reaction from people from, say, South Carolina, who (I thought) didn't even see it!

Never underestimate the power of mediated narrative (and, of course art) to change or even create the world in the mind of the audience ... even if that world is your own apartment!

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Derek,This reminds me of something that seems to h...