Leaving Neverland - Air Guitar - David Hickey

Leaving Neverland

I am listening to Miles Davis, the sun is setting and if I close my eyes for just a moment I am there – in a jazz club – no – in a Vegas jazz club, background noise, bourbon, cigars, ice, handshakes and that inevitable haze. I have never been to Vegas. I have no desire to go - I can close my eyes and be transported to a realm where it is still cool. Where the lights of Vegas twinkle and it is not for Celine Dion or Elton John - for me current Vegas strikes me as nothing more than Barry’s Neverland rather than the road-trip destination of Hunter S Thompson.

I found David Hickey’s prologue about his adopted home town fitting into this perception of Neverland; Vegas struck me as a place reminiscent of childhood where there are no responsibilities and for a brief fleeting moment everything and everybody is equal - in this sense an embodiment of the communist ideal. I can only equate Vegas with Nimbin in Australia, where I have been. Nimbin is a place where sixty year old fairies rather than cowboys pound the streets - it is also a place where again people are on this ‘even keel’ and whatever ‘is hidden elsewhere exists here in quotidian visibility’ - I wouldn’t want to go back to Nimbin.

For me these are places where people no longer have multi-faceted aspirations - they exude carpe diem but do not have any depth. Becoming a cocktail waitress is an aspiration but –is this arrogant of me? – it is not my aspiration but it is a goal; it just strikes me as a little soulless. I can admire both Vegas and Nimbin from a distance as they do not pretend to be anything that they are not - but maybe they are not for me as I would rather listen to Miles Davis than chat over him in that hazy venue.

Again I seem to be courting controversy. I am not writing Vegas off; I would not like to reside in a place where establishment is the driver, but actually is Vegas not really some sort of alternate societal hierarchy? David Hickey mentioned that in Vegas people know the odds but maybe he ought to have mentioned that they also know their place? Granted, at the table everyone is equal, apart from the dealer – he is elevated - but the moment one stands up from that table you will know your place. Again, granted that on the street everyone may seem to be on a more even playing field but are they really? Are all doors held open for the same length of time? Are all people allowed into the high rollers’ room, the room that I believe, is separated from the others? Yes the odds when playing cards are the same for everyone, the money that will be lost or won will be of the same green but I have a niggling feeling that although on the floor everyone is on a par, all individuals will know whether they are staying in the penthouse or not. Vegas is a place where people go to as they can become anything, or anybody, a distorted reality – and though for Wendy, John and Michael Darling they all were eager to fly to Neverland, in the end they all left.