Escape from Reality

Some philosophical thoughts that have been invading my mind of late need to be expressed. I’ll do it in this format but they may appear again in verse or allegory when probed.

One of these is the phenomenon of looking at a field of flowers and then regarding individual plants or rows. I have a photo of a field of lavender in France and it has a high degree of resolution. When one focuses on the overall visual effect of the field of flowers, one sees a sea of lavender color, romantic/rustic shapes of rural buildings which could be houses or utility buildings in the background, further back are hills of brown and various earthy hues. It is a photo that begs an impressionist to paint; to take out the reality and leave the impression, the fantasy of perfection, the escape from dust and weeds.

When one focuses his gaze in on the foreground, he notices caliche soil, the rangy individual plants that are individually less than attractive. There are weeds, dead, gnarly branches, that exist at the sub floral level. Not that any of this is ugly but definitely not as romantically beautiful as the overall scene of a sea of lavender color. This aspect of it would not be in the impressionist’s picture. This effect, this eliding of detail, the deliberate ignorance of detail also exists in almost every scene that we see. It is a sort of escape from reality. This was emphatically made apparent to us by the impressionist painters where the focus was on the overall visual effect of the scene as opposed to photographic/scientific reality. It is an escape that we readily make from the real world.

Last night, I assisted with the dismantling and removal of the stage props that make up the set for our mystery-dinner play, Murder in Cairo, at the Hyatt-Regency hotel in downtown Louisville. The fact that the hotel is two-faced was impressed upon me as we moved from one side to the other. There is the public side and the service side.

The public side is full of glass and polished surfaces, the walls are stylishly covered in currently tasteful colors, floors are carpeted with patterned carpets and the whole effect bespeaks luxury and wealth. It is maintained to impress guests and swallow them up in the ambiance of their surroundings and induce a certain low-level euphoria making them feel that all is perfect in this little corner of the world and made so just for them.

The service side is familiar to those who work at the hotel, who are there, not for the escape from reality but to provide the escape to the patrons, those who pay for the care free perfection and freedom from reality for a short time. Those who provide same get paid to do so.

Surely, some are there just because it is the only job they could get but they stay there because there is a certain satisfaction that they feel; also perhaps because it is easier to come back to the hotel and be paid than to try to find another job. Others are there because they have the romantic notion that this is what they want to with a major part of their time.

This service-side is analogous to the close up of the lavender field. The service area is the antithesis of the public side. It smells of discarded food in garbage containers; the surfaces are scuffed, dented, scarred with careless movements of heavy carts, in need of paint and repair but not littered with trash. The people who work there are aware of the condition of their surroundings and accept them because they are engaged in work activities, service to those on the public side who are willing to pay for it.

The dividing line between the public and service sides is a veil that is more than facilities, it is also psychological. The servers have different attitudes depending on which side they are on. When they are facilitating the escape they are polite, friendly, unhurried, and solicitous but as soon as they pierce the veil they are hell-bent on whatever they need for their next appearance on the public side, they are purposeful and it comes across as mean and rude but it is better described as business-like.

The business of providing escape is huge. It is everywhere from the TV in your family room to the most luxurious cruise ship afloat and the path winds through the movie house, the play house, the banquet rooms, ballrooms, hotels, casinos, Disney World, Las Vegas, New York City, San Francisco, London, and Paris to name a few of the stops along the way. It is the product of Marketing, with a capital M, the fantasy of promise,which if delivered becomes a sustained business. If not delivered, or if delivered poorly it is viewed as a get rich quick scheme and a flash in the pan. The losers are those who pay for escape and don't get it. 

Telemarketers who deliver $2 worth of product for $19.95, but-wait-we’ll-double-it-if-you-call-right-now are the stars of the get rich quick game. They create the fantasy and set the hook in anywhere from one to twenty-four minutes. Once in a while they call to mind a real need but their effort is aimed at creating a perceived need and a sense of urgency to satisfy it. Marketers in general do this in magazines, on-line, in stores, in newspapers, on billboards, on radio, and TV, even in the guise of program content as on the David Letterman show. There are other media but these are a few that come to mind.

So in our day to day world we tend to buy into the fantasy of escape and are willing to pay for the opportunity to do so. The job, stage, playing field all tend to bring us back to reality when we are the worker, performer, or player. It’s good to work, perform, and play but an escape from time to time is refreshing, even for those who provide escape for others.