In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.
It was the time of the storms:
great electrical storms.
Across the state
television signals would be disrupt(u/r)ed
and the viewing public
would sit motionless before
flickering, blue
erratic screens:
the Gilligan's Island rerun
would be edited differently
this time round.
On every street
across every town
a lone cyclist, head bowed
raced into
and away from
the storm
hoping to make it home
in time for
Wheel of Fortune
(with big cash prizes
and a new car at stake)
Alex Trebek's "message"
irrupt(u/r)ed into
every home
and the medium,
the message, the culture
began to fragment
On each carefully mapped
consciousness,
circuits of meaning
flashing, blue
and dizzying
in their complexity
erupt(u/r)ed and
played themselves out
While the storms
became real
via carefully encoded
representations.