I’ve not changed allegiance to sci-fi film metaphors. Not just yet. There is a direct connection between John Carpenter’s They Live and The Matrix anyway. There is talk of those who see, those who cannot unsee, and those who just can’t and don’t want to. There are the woke/awakened and those who aren’t.

But thinking about geographics. It’s been a recurring theme in the late nights and early mornings, and rather than obsess on the negatives, it seemed better to inventory exactly what I would be looking for. What I’d hope to find somewhere else. That brings me back to what was good before and what’s missing now.

What excited me about New York three decades ago was that it seemed everyone was making something. People came here to realize their ideas and create. The idea that nobody cared about commercial success is a load of balls but people weren’t afraid to create something that might never sell. They took risks. Or as Roddy Piper said in They Live, I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass, and I’m all out of bubble gum (or something like that). People came here to kick ass, and many did. Think for example of the music that came out of New York City between the early 70s and the early 90s. There were hundreds of different sounds and textures and cultural expressions (new and old cultural expressions) and every single one carried around the entire world. Hip-hop for one, though it wasn’t just happening in New York, impacted not only music, but all of art, entertainment, media, fashion, thought…

Now… it seems that the most clever, creative souls are employed/involved in creating a version of themselves to shill otherwise mundane products of someone else’s creation. To pimp boutique or even mass-produced items for retail consumption and get paid. To call themselves influencers. Or people are here just for the mass-consumerist orgy. To be seen consuming.

How absolutely dull.

People, en masse, have eschewed even a minor level of risk and they’ve eagerly chosen the blue pill. They’ve experienced just enough of what the red pill offered and opted to go back. Many will, like Cypher, sabotage themselves and others to re-assimilate with The Matrix. Many others have just never come close enough to the surface to see what they’re missing. That’s all well and good, I suppose, except they don’t seem particularly happy. More people than ever complain of feeling empty. That’s what happens when you possess everything you need and more but “own” nothing. There’s a pervading melancholy, and it’s not just me, and it’s fucking toxic. Nothing they consume is enough to stop the nagging question of meaning. The “is this all there really is” days and nights.

And that’s I think where The Matrix fell way short of impact. The Matrix was portrayed as an entirely external force when the truth may be that while it does exist, it’s really not from “other” forces at all, but a sort of mass self-hypnosis. Nothing has enslaved people so much as they’ve willed themselves into servitude to ideas that give them no sense of purpose and meaning. Every sequel just made it worse and rendered the first installment just a highly stylized action film. It did get people thinking though, maybe just enough to believe that they weren’t simply electric chattel. The Matrix in that sense is exactly the sort of film The Matrix would make to distract people and give them some self-esteem while keeping them in bondage.

They Live had no such artistic pretense, despite that it had a message. Not a qualitative judgement really, or not completely. It’s just more honest in that way.

So, kind of a tangent, but it gets at what I’m missing. If I can’t find my purpose, I want to be actively engaged in looking for it, and in an environment where if given the choice between the red and the blue pills, more people would go for the red. Where more people would be willing to take the risk and be authentic. Willing to try. Willing to fail. Willing to be whole. Does that place exist? It may just be here. Who knows? But from all appearances now, New York City is just done.