[Seven by Nine Squares home page] [Neoist Path]
The Birds, 1957
Tourism is the entrance into an unfamiliar situation in a way not usually conductive to thorough investigation. On 'close inspection' all situations are unfamiliar. The social margin of tourism is the interaction between the tourist and the local population. This interaction my be strained by differences in language and behavior. The barriers between the tourist and the locals are intensified by the tourist's sense of separation the 'known' realities of his/her home. The tourist avoids the local realities through romanticism. The locals are laughing at the tourist who is distractedly feeding the filthy and diseased pigeons and having his picture taken with them. Tourism is the role resulting from the fusion of the exploratory and the ignorant.
The Birds, 1957
Bread is a 'universal' symbol of the 'absolute' need of all people for food. This is the primary 'unifying factor in the contradictory diversity of the 'human condition'. The distribution of bread (food) is equal to a symbolic gesture of universality, e.g.. the misguided notion that "deep inside, everyone want the same 'basic' things". Perversity is the inversion of circumstance in order to create a situation counter to expected (i.e.. simple) meaning. Perversity exists for itself. Life is text. These words make familiar what is destroyed by the realities of action, the unfamiliar situation made real.