Time to Go Back to Town. Living Life Outdoors in the Wonderful World of the Metaverse
The beautiful, familiar and forgotten tradition of taking the chair out to the street to see the green and red rose trees, see them bloom for me and you and think: What a wonderful world! Watching people go by, the colors of the rainbow, so beautiful in the sky, contemplating the joy on the faces of the people passing by. Seeing friends shaking hands, saying: How do you do? But really saying: I love you!* What will its equivalent be in virtuality?
We will be able to slow down the pace, lose ourselves in tranquility and conquer love as in Doc Hollywood (1991) with the incomparable Michael J. Fox as a young and brilliant surgeon, successful and full of energy, who leaves the speed, changing his life and finding the sense. Or like Pure Country (1992) when the also young and successful Dusty, tired of the smoke and the lights, longing for the simplicity of the guitar and the a cappella voice, to find what he has lost he has to lose what he has gained and in doing so he finds himself, to love and music. Or we will have to lose ourselves as Cars (2006) a carbon copy of these stories, but with cars 15 years later. Will we see blue skies and white clouds, the bright blessed days, the dark sacred night and think: What a wonderful world !?*
How can we get lost like Lightning McQueen, Dusty Wyatt or like Dr. Benjamin Stone? A concrete and prompt option is to take the chair out to the street at sunset. Do not let contemporary customs and excess information keep us from living the town. If we continue to see the streets as mere elements of passage and not as experiential places we will never stop running, except that you live in Madrid where the fines for wanting to take a little air will cost you 1,000 euros.
The main purpose of these lines is to vindicate the chairs in the street as an excuse, and a primary means, to establish social relationships through public space. Raise the historical tradition as a transgressive discourse to experience the city. Is there or can there be an equivalent in virtuality? We will hear babies cry, we will watch them grow, they will learn much more than I will ever know, and I think: What a wonderful world! Yes, I think to myself: What a wonderful world!*
An increasingly crazy world, with worse States than the worst castrating parents that may exist, harassing their children-citizens with permanent and unnecessary limitations, curtailing rights, charging with legalisms, regulations and procedures, where will those who want peace of mind, freedom and independence go? To the Metaverse. And once there, in their new home, unrestricted and welcoming, how will they take the chairs out to the streets and get some fresh air, in virtuality and in reality?
There will have to be towns in which some traditions never die and life is lived outdoors (but inside). Could that be the Metaverse?
- *Louis Armstrong, What a Wonderful World (1967)
