Plague Journal, World’s Center
These lines, quoted from America, by Jean Baudrillard, published 1986, translated by Chris Turner:
NEW YORK
More sirens here, day and night. The cars are faster, the advertisements more aggressive. This is wall-to-wall prostitution. And total electric light too. And the game – all games – gets more intense. It’s always like this when you’ve getting near the center of the world. But the people smile. Actually they smile more and more, though never to other people, always to themselves……
The number of people here who think alone, sing alone, and eat and talk alone in the streets is mind-boggling. And yet they don’t add up. Quite the reverse. They subtract from each other and their resemblance to one another is uncertain.
Yet there is a certain solitude like no other – that of the man preparing his meal in public on a wall, or on the hood of his car, or along a fence, alone. You see that all the time here. It is the saddest sight in the world. Sadder than destitution, sadder than the beggar is the man who eats alone in public. Nothing more contradicts the laws of man or beast, for animals always do each other the honor of sharing or disputing each other’s food. He who eats alone is dead (but not he who drinks alone. Why is this?)
Why do people live in New York? There is no relationship between them. Except for the inner electricity which results from the simple fact of their being crowded together. A magical sensation of contiguity and attraction for an artificial centrality. This is what makes it a self-attracting universe, which there is no reason to leave. There is no human reason to be here, except for the shear ecstasy of being crowded together.
Jean Baudrillard, born July 27, 1929 Reims, died March 16, 2007 Paris. Sociologist, philosopher, cultural theorist, political commentator, photographer.
If you have never visited New York City, — go. If for no more than a weekend — you will feel, you will see the same features so elegantly described by Jean Baudrillard.
Should this tune should be one of your favorites, CLICK HERE for the story behind the composition of A Whiter Shade of Pale.
More tomorrow.
