Glow

I always find it mildly amusing when people proclaim the death of the California Dream; usually of course they're East Coast writers who've clearly never lived it (which begs the question of how they could know "it" is dead, but I digress).  But more seriously it's hard to say with a straight face that the California Dream is dead when events like Santa Monica's Glow clearly are alive and well.

I mean here are hundreds of thousands of people from all walks of live--families, hipsters, buttoned down types, cyberpunks, yuppies, young, old, poor, rich, black, white, brown, whatever--out to enjoy beautiful works of art on the beautiful Santa Monica beach.  People are unified in their common pursuit of a good time.  Fifty something desk jockey's and fourteen year old teenieboppers are equally astounded and amazed at the "Sandbox exhibit", a giant contraption which projects people's hand movements in a small (say two square yards) sandbox to a giant one (say thirty by thirty yards) right by it on the beach.  I can personally attest that it was damn cool.


People are in costume, street performers are hustling to reinvent entertainment, food trucks are slinging their delicious wares from across the globe--at Glow, Californians are chasing our version of Gatsby's Green Light.  We are working to fulfill the great human potential.  Creativity, Innovation, Discovery!  Here is the vocabulary of the California Dream.  And here is why I believe California is a Dream worth fighting for.


NOTCOT at GLOW: EX-SE-08 Shih Chieh Huang from Jean Aw on Vimeo.