... thinking about the "collage effect" of media, the bombardment of images and their "immersive" quality, putting us into the crucible of the moment, grabbing us with the choicest morsels - those stories that blot out or at least overshadow those other minor goings-on of the day, kidnapping our attention with an urgent, burning, breathless, aesthetic of now... Look at the headlines...a massive mushroom-cloud-like explosion in Beirut, Lebanon - followed by protests and rioting, most of the city in ruins, the entire government resigning...a fraudulent stolen election in Belarus, another corrupt autocrat still in power....more protests by night...a clamp-down in Hong Kong, an "Apple daily newspaper owner" arrested and later released on bail... another police shooting in the States... stores in Chicago looted overnight.... Portland demonstrations...clashes with police...slap-dash executive orders, a relief bill still on hold....school re-openings gone awry down south, Georgia teens with COVID...shark sightings in Maine, one woman killed...Russia claims a first "vaccine" for the virus...and New Zealand, only a single case in the past 102 days... the world in a nutshell existing as the collage....the quick-stream, 24/7 newsfeed, the daily mishmash of everything all at once... The sense of finitude, closure, the packaging and selling of news...And what of other people, places, phenomena? Happening out there? And is there nothing else? Nothing beyond this jarring, jolting canvas??? Much to be sure by way of entertainment, by way of oddities, sports updates, business cycles...but mostly on any given day the breaking news exclusives, the collage of headlines, backed by the official news-reading voice, backed by talking-heads, and by the multiple, unrelenting viral videos that erupt and appear out of nowhere, seemingly random images that feed, frame, edit, encapsulate our diurnal time allotment for us all to SEE and yet...still random...
It was several decades ago now that the rumors were swirling about a possible ghost @ Moonlight Beach. There was a definite "buzz" among the Coast Highway vendors and their customers - enough to keep the conversation rolling... Ronnie, for example, the short-order cook at the 1-11 Diner used to compare notes with Sue-Ellen - owner of the guitar shop about the latest "sighting" while Eduardo who owned the Taco Shack near the corner of D Street asked Mel who ran the old movie theater across the street if the real headquarters for the poltergeist might be in one of the older buildings - maybe an attic space. Maybe it's a ghost that goes on field-trips now and then - agreed Manny Uwanco - proprietor of the used book store and cousin to George Uwanco - the owner of George's diner. Everyone tried to convince Lou - of Lou's Records that this thing was real - but he proved to be the skeptic of all skeptics. Truth be told - it was hard to imagine a less hau...
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