Is this it?
No.
Is this it?
No.
Hmm . . .
More drama . . . James turns the deck, looking at their faces, and riffles through it as though he knew where it was, but suddenly, it wasn’t where it was suppose to be.
This one?
Nope.
Although we have completely lost sight of the card, we understand that somehow, he has not. If he’s entertaining a particularly naïve individual, they may give a nervous chuckle, such as to empathize with the embarrassment of the magician whose trick is fumbling.
To be brief, the foil seems more amused that concerned with the whole process: is he wearing long sleeves, etc. The way it ends is that ultimately the card is folded into fourths and although he’s holding both of your hands with both of his hands, the card you’ve signed your name onto comes slipping out of his mouth from between his lips quite dramatically.
Usually, however, we are not so deceived by the game so as to think that he has truly lost the card. We remain quite sure, although skeptical of how it will end, that he will in fact find our card. Still, quite often we forget that the trick is on us, and we entertain it such that we always want to see another one.
It’s season finale time on television and it rivets many of us at the same time it torments us. We remember, year after year, that the writers will never fail to leave us on a cliffhanger. If all of the loose ends were resolved, we’d lose our sense of wonder and intrigue. Although we understand that throughout the whole season, the writers are fully cognoscente of the outcome (eventually), and yet we will be left to our stupor for months.
What’s the worst thing to have come from the recent writer’s strike? When we are children, we are the particularly naïve foil who is watching a puppet show. There is a complete disconnect between the fact and the imagination of the story. We are unaware that we are being tricked and deceived in the name of communicating a story and keeping our interest.
As we get older, we’re a bit more aware of the rules of the game, but we never fail to join in. Subtly and deliberately, we are drawn into a story such that we forget that there are people within the stage, hiding behind the velvet curtain. When done well, we may understand how the puppets move, but we’re not actively conscious of it. This is what it means to be amused. It is an unthinking-ness that takes place behind our thinking-ness. We are still informed that what we are watching is a lie, but we accept it unthinkingly. We are not unaware that there is a person’s hand inside of the illusion, but the mystery would be lost if our attention were focused upon it.
Recently, television has begun to mock the American public. We’ve caught a glimpse of the flesh of an arm that is going inside of the puppet. The hollowness of the deception has been realized. Although we knew full-well that what was happening on screen had human hands inside of it, we have been too captivated in the mystery to think about it.
Lately, it seems, we’re more aware as ever of the deception. Suddenly, when the fiction is over, it is just me and the lostness of time. What have we done? We’ve reorganized and planned our lives around deception and commercial advertisements.
Suddenly, we have recognized ourselves as little individuals connected only within a land of make believe—with no bearing on the world outside. Its mystery doesn’t hold us as well as it did before. We know now that the only fact of the story is that behind it there are a hundred magicians hunkered down behind the screen attempting to lose my card, only to produce once again. There is suddenly nothing in that story that wasn’t written only weeks before by some chap who needed to make a living. He’ll do it any way he can—pushing all of the buttons of paranoia and throwing all of the levers of society’s lostness in time. He’ll tweak the story in so many ways so as to compete for our audience, and all we’ve been reduce to are amused little suckers, isolated indoors, aware of how pathetic it is to observe life vicariously.
In fact, these writers have managed to pull our card out of their mouths, but it’s wet and creased and it can’t be used again. Still, quite often we forget that the trick is on us, and we entertain it such that we always want to see another one.
Go ahead, chose one of my 51 cards and write your name on it . . .