escapism

i've opined on this blog on the love i have for travel and more specifically, the feeling you get when you GO. the change in lighting as you cross from the terminal to the jetway. the welcomed thud when the airplane's landing gear first hits the destination tarmac. the first step out of a hotel in a new city. a stamp on the passport. it's a feeling that is in every way freeing, overwhelming, invigorating and empowering. you're moving. escaping. going.

i needed an afternoon break from a couple projects and grabbed some stale joe and jumped onto the Influx Insights blog, finding a great post on escape, just when i needed a mental vacation. not only does the post feature one of my favorite authors and stories, Thoreau's Walden, VW's nightdriving spot is embedded.





in short, a British theater company is performing Walden in a parking garage. more here at the BLDblog. a juxtaposition of Thoreau's focus on solitude and nature and the man-made concrete incubator that is a parking garage. it got me thinking of how i define escape. the important act of clearing one's head and experiencing a freshness one can't get just by cycling through life. not literally cycling, though, as it's quite a great escape. how do brands allow for escape? how do our hobbies, likes and activities provide a window into what our soul fights to make constant?

Walden in a garage, awesome. the veedub spot, equally insightful. both underline what I think was one of Walden's main points: awareness.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived...

Walden was certainly a precursor to modern stories of solitude. just re-reading the excerpts in the BLDBlog made me think of the way I felt while reading Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer and now as I read Desert Solitude by Edward Abbey. so where are you trying to go? where do your customers want to be transported? and most importantly, for your wallet, how do you get there (and get them there) without booking a cross-Pacific trip?