Setting: Orlando, late October. Work conference. Iconic, industry-dominating group leisure facility.
This journal uses a system of symbols (sigils) to represent situational socio-cultural phenomena and psychological states elicited by said phenomena. This system may grow and adapt as necessary in future posts.
ρ IRL (in real life)
℥ ephemera, masquerading as substantive
™ industrialized culture
∹ excession
∞ das Unbedingte
∞ das Unbedingte
℞ ameliorative/palliative
● negotium
ο otium
⚔ picket action (border control)
෴ zerrissenheit
≇ aporia
⧑ the professional self (Harlequin's bowtie)
DAY 1. TRAVEL.
- Entry
- Entry
™ On the aircraft, I see five adults wearing mouse ears, only one of whom is accompanied by a child.
● Upon exiting the airport, I am immediately seduced by shirtsleeve temperature and a gentle breeze. The enemy is wily.
™ Jonathan the Lyft driver and I pass mile upon mile of theme-park-ancillary and theme-park-adjacent hotels. All the brands. All peach and off-white and burnt sienna. Apparently you can build massive structures from imitation adobe and genuine capitalism.
- The map is not the territory
- The map is not the territory
℥ Entering the territory. A soporific lace of well-paved, curving highway exits. They gently lead to the various properties but also seem to trace out land developments to come.
℥ The roads are all hemmed by about 20 feet of well-maintained lawn, ending in an imposing wall of dense vines, pine trees, and tall grasses.
Stay on the path, it says.
∹ I do not roll my eyes as the couple in front of me has a long, detailed conversation with the hotel registrar about when the fireworks happen.
- The danger
- The danger
∞ I rush to my room, walking as fast as I possibly can through a labyrinth of signs. ROOMS 14244-14307. ROOMS ←14308-14359. ROOMS 14360-14980→. CAST MEMBER ENTRANCE ONLY.
℞ Finally I arrive. The room’s thermostat reads 65 degrees. I kick off my shoes and slide underneath the immaculate white duvet.
℞ Finally I arrive. The room’s thermostat reads 65 degrees. I kick off my shoes and slide underneath the immaculate white duvet.
ο Christ I love hotels.
● Christ I love hotels.
DAY 2. ACCLIMATION.
- Blinded by the light
- Blinded by the light
∹ There is a 7:30 AM welcoming breakfast in the Southern Hemisphere Ballroom. There is dramatic lighting and a playlist including Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Credence, etc. I wonder how it is that 7:30 AM should mean dramatic lighting and nostalgia rock. We must be having fun.
- Eternal Recurrence, collapsing aperture
- Eternal Recurrence, collapsing aperture
⧑ Time for coffee and networking!
⧑ “How was your flight?” I meet up with some colleagues from my work. Some of them have brought along husbands to the conference, to tack on an actual vacation at the iconic industrial leisure facility.
● “You’d have to be crazy to do this job!”
● “Nobody grows up wanting to be a research administrator!”
℥ I attend the seminar “Clinical Research Trial Contracts.” The speaker, an attorney, is funny and talks fast. She loves clinical trials contracts the most.
⧑● Time for coffee and networking!
I learn anything is possible as long as you put it in the contract.I realize I have just found the key to my ultimate self-actualization.
⧑● Time for coffee and networking!
⧑● “How was your flight?” I meet up with some colleagues from my work. Some of them have brought along husbands to the conference, to tack on an actual vacation at the iconic industrial leisure facility.
●● “You’d have to be crazy to do this job!”
●● “Nobody grows up wanting to be a research administrator!”
●● Time for coffee and networking!
●●● “You’d have to be crazy to do this job!”
●●● “Nobody grows up wanting to be a research administrator!”
- Urgent care of the self
⚔ I stay in my room for the evening, pleading illness which is half an aversion to small talk with colleagues and half the fatigue of a weeks-long bout with asthma. The coughing is real.
● Room service. Corned beef sandwich $22.
℞ Bath.
ο Christ I love hotels.
● Christ I love hotels.
● Christ I love hotels.
DAY 3. THOROUGHLY VACATED.
- Genuine Negotium
- Genuine Negotium
● This hotel/resort/conference center was designed by Michael Graves.
℥ The corridors are named after the four directions; the ballrooms, after the hemispheres. The conference rooms are located on the continents - Asia 1, 2, etc. In my trans-hemispheric travels I observe that the climate of all the continents is similar - stuffy, a bit warm, conducive to prolonged, severe coughing fits. Each continent’s tools and customs are the same: dais, PowerPoint, laser pointer, lavalier microphone, inside jokes. (“You’d have to be crazy to do this job!”)
●●●●● I go to “Problem Solving in Research Administration.” I can tell by the Talbots jacket that this management-type lady is bad news. She brings up a PowerPoint slide of the famous (apocryphal) Einstein quote: “If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.” She says, “That’s not very good, is it? We want to spend more time thinking about solutions.”
Let that sink in. Let. That. Sink. In.
⚔ At the mention of turn-to-your-neighbor activities, I bolt.
- The danger
℥ A Minotaur-worthy passage of corridors and hallways and conference rooms configured from fake walls. Finally I am outside, I’ve made it to a corner of a square pond. “No swimming, no fishing, no playing. Beware dangerous wildlife.”
℥ A Minotaur-worthy passage of corridors and hallways and conference rooms configured from fake walls. Finally I am outside, I’ve made it to a corner of a square pond. “No swimming, no fishing, no playing. Beware dangerous wildlife.”
≇ I lie down on the perfectly trimmed grass. Surrounding me, a gentle haze of near-white noise. A hint of contrabasso, indiscernible source, overhung with a grey mezzo of air conditioners, ventilation, exhausts, coming from my right. Light soprano of water feature fountain from the back left. Is this chorus intentional, like the sidewalks, the grass, the palm trees, the pond?
∞ The sky is a perfect, brilliant blue, the only unintentional thing I see. It is big, a salvation of bigness. I stay there a long time.
- Counterfeit Otium
™ ⧑ My colleagues and I wait for the crowded shuttle bus to take us to Disney Springs.
™ On the shuttle I learn that the wait for the Harry Potter ride is 2 and a half hours but if you have an Express Pass it’s only one hour. Class consciousness alive and accepting new clients in the Magic Kingdom.
≇ Speaking of which, why is Goofy, a dog, treated as human-equivalent, while Pluto, also a dog, is not?
One wears a vest, the other, a collar.
℥ Disney Springs is supposed to look like a charming town, with entertainment shopping and high-end dining. But it doesn’t look at all like a town and I can’t quite put my finger on why. It’s like how in a dream, corners are sanded down, details smoothed over, pieces do and do not fit together. A community nestled in the uncanny valley.
- The danger
ρ We gather in a little amphitheatre near a lake. The sunset and the twinkling lights on the far shore are absolutely lovely. There are fancy ‘fifties convertibles that go into the water like boats. God I so want to do this but they are taking a break.
≇ The first musical act is “Joe and Tun”. Joe is a skinny guy with sunglasses and an acoustic guitar (many pedals), Tun is a rolly, cheerful man behind a small drum set. I wonder, for a long while, are Joe and Tun really named Joe and Tun, or are they other people playing the roles of musicians “Joe” and “Tun”? CAST MEMBER ENTRANCE ONLY.
≇ ෴ These songs they play, are they the work of Joe and Tun the real people, or “Joe and Tun” the entertainment feature? Or were they composed in some corporate conference room for the use of not-Joe-and-Tun playing the roles of “Joe and Tun”? This makes my head spin.
⚔ There's an a cappella group up next. I bolt.
ο On the shuttle back to the hotel, I learn my coworker shares my love for science fiction and historical drama. She tells me how she bought her husband scuba diving lessons so that on vacations he would leave her alone and let her read. This conversation is genuine otium.
DAY 4. REVELATION.
෴ ρ Another 7:30 breakfast. More Credence. During my egg and cheese on a croissant I have a coughing fit. I cough so hard I literally break a rib. It is a wholly unmistakeable and arresting sensation. I don’t want to believe it. I go back to my room.
℞ Six ibuprofen, and I slide carefully beneath the immaculate white duvet. This place has not broken me, I did it to myself.
≇ Is negotium in the eye of the beholder? If you don’t feel depleted by your industrially-designed and -administered trip to the Magic Kingdom, does it count?
෴ Isn’t the pursuit of otium itself a Magic Kingdom expedition,as a time of turning in from the larger world to a more perfect one, a restorative and nourishing place or mindset (Christ I love hotels)?
ο ρ ⚔ At 1 PM I check out of my room, with three hours to spare before my flight. No longer a guest, and fully clothed in business casual, I lie down by a pool and rest quietly under the perfect and unintentional blue sky.
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| Kyle Bartlett is a composer and research administrator living in Philadelphia. |