Hold it like this. Look through here. Now what we’ve got here is a new fangled electric kaleidoscope. Wait. Point it this way. Ah, yes. You see that, don’t you? Shards of celebrity. Everything’s fabulous. Beach fronts, condos, towers. Careful, it comes and goes so quickly. Flesh. Skin Naked. Everybody’s tight. Everybody’s beautiful. Easy there, fella. Money. Money beyond your reckoning. And significance. Feel the significance. It’s significance beyond your reach. Everything seems to count for so much. And fame. And glory. It’s all so beautiful. It’s all so gorgeous. It’s all so colorful. It’s all so loud. It’s all so here, isn’t it? It’s all so, it’s all so goddamned glorious. You could almost reach out. You could almost touch it. It’s almost yours. High definition. Hyper definition.

They make stereo speakers now that exceed the range of the human ear. What does this mean? It means that our media is now recorded and played back higher, faster, better, than our senses can register, than our senses can tell. It means that the fake is hyper real. High definition surround sound has exceeded our senses. Not just saturated them. Oversatured them. Overpowered them. Overexposed them.

We are overexposed to everything. Disaster. Death. Celebrity. Crime. Coming at us through the supercharged electric kaleidoscope. We’re buzzing.

But I can’t blame media. I don’t blame media. There is no blame. Technology, media, it’s all supply and demand. Which means that somebody, somebodies, is demanding the Pope, the conclave, Michael Jackson, Paris, Britney’s baby, American Idol, Girls Gone Wild, the tsunami. And, after all, I’m a somebody. We are all culpable.

And what’s more: we have a choice. We can, when it suits us, when we are motivated enough, turn it down, turn it off, step away, take away from our eyes, the electric kaleidoscope. We can, still, shake the machine. And when we recover, when we blink off the saturation and when the ring of sham has left our ears, there is still the smell of April, there is still a clear unbruised sky, there is still the tilt of my dog’s head, there are still the trees gathering up history. There are still the lives and the hopes and the dreams of the audience in the murky playhouse with more stories and more comedy and more tragedy than all the rabblerousing spectacle they might march across the pretty stage.

SS