Utopia has been yang. In one way or another, from Plato on, utopia has been the big yang motorcycle trip. Bright, dry, clear, strong, firm, active, aggressive, lineal, progressive, creative, expanding, advancing, and hot.

Our civilization is now so intensely yang that any imagination of bettering its injustices or eluding its self-destructiveness must involve a reversal.

To attain the constant, we must return, go round, go inward, go yinward. What would a yin utopia be? It would be dark, wet, obscure, weak, yielding, passive, participatory, circular, cyclical, peaceful, nurturant, retreating, contracting, and cold.

The planned spectacle is fine, but I prefer the unofficial stuff that slops into the frame. That’s where the veneer rubs off and happenings can happen. I like the shadowy world of before, the impending excitement of things on the verge, and the discarded world of after, where the cue cards are stored, the carpets vacuumed, the power cords bunched into knots. The suggestion of human ceremony is worth more to me than the ritual itself. It is as if the event is simply a pause between the greater worlds of unpacking and repacking. Here people sweat, practice, concentrate, arrange, plan, argue. Here, outside of the spectacle, the edges melt together.