FOR SEVERAL YEARS, I had been bored. Not a whining, restless child’s boredom ( although I was not above that ) but a dense, blanketing MALAISE. It seemed to me that there was nothing new to be discovered ever again. Our society was utterly, ruinously DERIVATIVE ( although the word derivative as a criticism is itself derivative ). We were the first human beings who would never see anything for the first time. The secondhand experience is always better. The image is CRISPER, the view is keener, the camera angle and the soundtrack manipulate my emotions in a way reality can’t anymore. I don’t know that we are actually HUMAN at this point. WE ARE ALL WORKING FROM THE SAME DOG-EARED SCRIPT.