{"id":1617,"date":"2012-09-10T12:04:43","date_gmt":"2012-09-10T20:04:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/?p=1617"},"modified":"2012-09-10T12:04:50","modified_gmt":"2012-09-10T20:04:50","slug":"the-stuff-of-dreams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/?p=1617","title":{"rendered":"The stuff of dreams"},"content":{"rendered":"

“\u2026I’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.”<\/em><\/p>\n

-Meredith, Zero History,<\/em> William Gibson<\/p>\n

So I know I’ve spoken at some length before about wanting things not because you need them, but because you want<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n

So many of the things we want<\/em> are tendrils of our dreams. \u00a0And not just the physical objects, either. \u00a0A 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. \u00a0A 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. \u00a0Or maybe just the title track from the last album by Madness, “The Liberty of Norton Folgate”. \u00a0It is their “A Day In The Life” and it is an amazing madcap wander through centuries of London history\u2026and 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”.<\/p>\n

Then you have the things<\/em> 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. \u00a0Or 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. \u00a0Or 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. \u00a0Or 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.<\/p>\n

And I suppose deep down\u00a0that’s<\/em> why I want a top-of-the-line smartphone, a good pair of Palladiums and just the right second-hand coat\u2026because at some level I think if I’m dressed for the dream, I can at least walk in its shadow for a little while.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“\u2026I’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 … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The stuff of dreams”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1617"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1617"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1618,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1617\/revisions\/1618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}