What Is It ALL About?


Once again, traveling on business leaves me feeling I'm out of the loop on news. I don't get my steady diet of information, especially since I'm staying in a hotel that doesn't have a high speed connection.


I have become that dependant upon the computer. I turn to it for information during the day; I am e-mailed updates regularly from CNN on subjects I have chosen. So driving around and being at a hotel without a "fat pipe" means that I have been suffering information deprivation.


However, this lack of informational stimulation also forces me to open my eyes and look at the world a little differently. Not holed up in an office in New York, driving around in a car and out at meetings in a different city from the one in which I live brings me to a new world, a new space.


I am not with the people I see everyday and so find myself looking more closely at the fresher faces around me while listen even more closely to the voices of those back at home.


It is invigorating, if sometimes tiring. I write this while waiting at a restaurant to see an old friend not seen for two years; it is a pleasurable experience and a moment to reflect on a week?s worth of brain stimulation.


If I am somewhat introspective it is because I have encountered such contrasts that they are hard to put in place.


While driving and walking I have seen beggars in the most affluent parts of the world.


At the same time, I had breakfast this morning with a couple who are old friends. The wife stopped in the middle of breakfast to phone the attendant on their plane to make sure the catering was correct. She and her youngest daughter were taking the family jet to New York to take in a bit of Fashion Week and WICKED. Her husband advised her that she might want to head home early on Sunday with the same tone that one uses to advise someone to start early to avoid traffic.


The personal jet: the new luxury vehicle.

It was the illustration of the great contrasts that are part of our world. I told my friends that this was the happiest time in my life and they are very pleased for me - and they are two of the most genuine people I know. They are just very rich.

But it was the punctuation point of the contrasts that are around us all. The private jet. The beggar on Rodeo Drive. Fashion Week. A war in Iraq. Passing a paper stand to see the headline that the death toll in the war has gone above 1000. Another that the U.S. now admits that it does not control regions of that country.

It has been a week of conversations about integrating technologies for the next generation television experience while a blow by blow account took place of an Los Angeles car chase on the station in the background. And that report was the frame for a conversation about the danger to our nuclear facilities by terrorists.

There comes a moment in the silence when one, or more specifically I, want to stand up and scream: stop the madness!


However, the madness goes on and all we can do is to find ways to live sanely within the chaos of the universe. It all causes me to realize that this is the issue all of history has attempted to come to terms with and which has been reflected by a number of our greatest artists from Shakespeare to DaVinci to Beckett. We are all waiting for Godot or living our personal version of THE TEMPEST.


My Nomination for Media Mayhem of the Week:


Dick Cheney insinuated that to vote Democratic in November was to vote for another terrorist attack on the United States. This was followed by an uproar in the media about the remarks appropriateness. It was not balanced by a cohesive Democratic response ? not one that had any strength. Score one for the Bush-Cheney Team, not in the exchange but in the failure of the Democrats to resoundly respond.