Lose Yourself

There’s nothing like an entertaining distraction to escape the grind of existence. Just yesterday, I sacrificed a batch of steamed broccoli to novel I couldn’t pull my nose out of, and I don’t regret it.  

Some less personal willed distractions feel stickier to me. The world’s on fire, and we’re ignoring it?  In Manhattan, a lot is going on. Student protests bring the suffering in Gaza into a sharp, heartbreaking focus. Trump on trial, and it seems the more horrible he is, the better his odds for reelection. Everything already feels wildly surreal to me, and along comes the Met Gala.

With the canary gasping in the coal mine, the Met Gala, a designer’s photo op featuring the rich, famous, and selectively relevant attired in outré themed fashion seems out of step. With the fate of so many so precarious, preening excess feels very Marie Antoinette. I am not wagging my finger. I’m not that kind of gal. I’m just telling you how I feel.

In the past I’ve loved reading up on the Gala, with its who’s who of who’s who of who’s really who in the world of cultural relevance and cavalcade of attention-grabbing get-up.  It has been an entertaining distraction from humdrum and hard reality. And life goes on. Designers and fundraisers and A-listers have jobs to do that require visibility. I get that. And if you were able to lose yourself in the mystery of literal hourglass Kim Kardashian’s apparent lack of internal organs or a human ribcage, that’s cool. I’m not here to judge anyone else’s entertaining distraction, but explaining, in May, 2024, the limit of mine.