Flagrant délit, Madelon Vriesendorp, 1975

January saw me traveling between cities and meeting with different folks.

After seeing the arrival of a new year with Angelica, I was on an early train to New York City where upon arrival I was subsequently swallowed into the pit of concrete and artificiality. Strange, that humans see the obstruction of nature and natural light as acceptable in order to be city dwellers, where towers of glass and steel and brick trap us like rats in a hell-like enclosure.

The Dutch architectural theorist and urbanist, Rem Koolhaas writes in his book Delirious New York - "the metropolis strives to reach a mythical point where the world is completely fabricated by man so that it absolutely coincides with his desires." Are we all just living in other people’s fantasies and is nothing really real?

I wondered if that could be one explanation for why so many people become mentally ill, unhappy, and angry. Societies throughout the world are filled with dead souls wandering around, people who were born simply to die, many before even realizing they’d been forced into an illusion. That much of what human beings are conditioned to believe is normal or necessary is invention and everyone is sacrificed in one way or another to keep the fantasy alive for the conductors of chaos at the top.

Walking around New York City always makes me a little depressed the longer I’m there. In the midst of the energy and diversity, I wonder to myself if all of it is real or pretend.

And then it was off to Philadelphia.