“…I’d imagined those shoes. And when you imagine something like that, you imagine a world. You imagine the world those shoes come from, and you wonder if they could happen here, in this world, the one with all the bullshit. And sometimes they can. For a season or two.”
-Meredith, Zero History, William Gibson
So I know I’ve spoken at some length before about wanting things not because you need them, but because you want to need them – whether it’s a Barbour jacket and day pack for me to hike the Cotswold Way in, or for a 100-shot C-Mag drum on a full-auto M4 so Bubba can fight the gay brown liberal hordes threatening his own ignorance – and it occurs to me that once again, William Gibson has stumbled onto something very profound.
So many of the things we want are tendrils of our dreams. And not just the physical objects, either. A walk to the Riptide, out at the end of the L-Taraval when the fog is coming on strong, like a visit to a small pocket of some different reality. A high-speed dash on the Deutsche Bahn from Paris to Munich to Switzerland invites contemplation of a world where extremely rapid rail trumps both air travel and freeway driving as the best way to be whisked long distances. A sit-down at Trials Pub, which has no television to interfere with the background murmur of old 2-Tone, a crackling fire, and the light rail gliding by outside. Or maybe just the title track from the last album by Madness, “The Liberty of Norton Folgate”. It is their “A Day In The Life” and it is an amazing madcap wander through centuries of London history…and in the iPhone headphones on a dark evening, it’s enough to make a Timelord of you, stepping in and out of the river of time, “in your second-hand coat, happy just to float”.
Then you have the things themselves, like the steel-toed workboots that I needed when I was having my best year at my best West Coast job in 2006. Couple them with a work jacket to keep off the chill and deflect sparks from the iPad in the shoulder rig out by the smoker on a cold morning, Absolute Radio’s Rock and Roll Football streaming in from London, and it’s like I’m down by the allotment shed practicing my peculiar American hobby before walking out to market with the wife. Or my peacoat, which I wanted for ten years without thinking exactly why – but realizing now it’s perfect for the Outer Sunset with wind and fog but no rain. Or the iPad itself under the jacket (or even in a ScottEVest jacket?) and a sturdy pair of boots to use while spending my days wandering around the city, a digital nomad taking in everything around me without having to carry so much as a water bottle. Or those amber-polarized Ray-Bans, the rose-colored glasses through which I saw so much of 2005 and 2006 and which make the world seem a little better by looking through them.
And I suppose deep down that’s why I want a top-of-the-line smartphone, a good pair of Palladiums and just the right second-hand coat…because at some level I think if I’m dressed for the dream, I can at least walk in its shadow for a little while.