Go2Go2Go2
^{Travel Exhortations by Ric Carter}

TRAVEL AS PERFORMANCE ART:
  Get Your Script Together

You can travel in such a manner as to enrich and recreate not only yourself and your own soul, but the souls and hearts and minds of all those who behold you. You can do this by assuming a role, crafting a performance, turning your journey into an artform. Your art may range from the simplest and most profound to the most grandiloquent and symphonic.

To a certain extent, you may already be performing travel art, especially if you manage to encapsulate any recognizable stereotypes of travelers:

• * The wandering hippy minstrel
• * The clueless suburban RVers
• * The camera-wielding Japanese mob
• * The button-down business agent
• * The impoverished student on break
• * The prying anthropologist

But with some little preparation and scripting and rehearsing, and maybe some performance-enhancing drugs, you can create one or more memorable roles that will leave your audience(s) gasping and transformed.

ROLES

Assume a character. It may be who you already are, or who you do or don't want to be, or some random schmuck. But, as with method acting or working as an undercover spy, you must wear that role like a your skin. A priest or nun or magician, an arrogant social-financial elitist, a world-weary philosopher, a common worker, a savvy outdoorsman or -woman, a sly crook, a helpless geek or techno-nerd, any of the stereotypes mentioned above or any that you can envisage — whatever. Study that character, learn their language and motivations and habits and haunts, and BECOME that person.

PROPS

For costume, you may need to filter the offerings of thrift shops, the LL BEAN and LANDS END catalogs, theatrical costumers, discount clothiers, custom tailors — but you MUST look your part. Similarly, outfit yourself with the luggage and gadgets and tools and paraphernalia your role-creature would carry while traveling. It it's in character, you could even steal this stuff.

SCRIPTS

Consider your character, where and when and how they are to travel, what situations they are likely to encounter. Write appropriate monologues and dialogues — plagiarize from existing literature as needed. Unless you are quite talented and practiced, beware of ad-libbing. Also script your movements and actions and reactions, choosing motions consistent with your character.

Some roles may require very little verbal scripting — the hippy can make the phrase, "Oh wow, man!" work well in many circumstances. But you must also master the complete repertoire of gestures and articulations — that hippy should be able to panhandle, play guitar, shrug, avoid police, etc. You may do some try-out performances and revise your scripts, depending on whether audience reactions meet your goals. Practice may not make you perfect, but it'll help.

SHOWTIME

Get out there and knock'em dead! Whether you're miming or blending into the background or chewing the scenery, you are ON STAGE. Make every appearance count. You may find yourself in an impromptu ensemble of other travel and/or local performers, each projecting their own complete stereotypes. Play with the expectations, work with the congruities, make the moment SING as you realize your scripts. Whether your audience is tiny or vast, friendly or hostile, your performance(s) can energize and transform them. If they start pelting you with bricks, especially if you *want* bricks, you know you've won them over. What a trouper!

TRAVEL AS POLITICAL THEATRE:
  Making Your Damn Statement

Unless you're a mindless cow, you probably have some political views. If you're a mindless sheep, those views may be very strong, but that's another subject — see How To Design And Promote A CONSPIRACY THEORY. Anyway, you can and should travel in ways that will reinforce and display your views. o make your views known is to make a political statement. To bring those views to the attention of others requires political theatre. The difference is in degree, not kind.

If you like and support repressive regimes, visit lands dominated by such regimes, and let the regime know that you are their friend and ally. If you don't like such regimes, visit such lands anyway and get in touch (caref­ully) with opposition groups and tell them that you are THEIR friend and ally. Either way, you can turn your friendship statement into theatre by painting slogans on walls and gates and vehicles, desecrating sites sacred to the enemies of your friends or firebombing their infrastructure, etc. But just being there is a statement.

You can graphically demonstrate your political views by displaying certain ATTITUDES (click here) and by explicit PERFORMANCE (click here). Fine-tune your portrayal(s) of arrogance or apathy or sympathy or greed or mystricism or psychosis, etc.

You can also wear T-shirts that express your political-religious-economic-artistic-athletic-sexual-cultural-etc preferences, hopefully in language that can be understood locally. You can otherwise dress (IF AT ALL - click here) in a manner that aligns with your preferred social group(s) — as an aristocrat, cleric, student, worker, peasant, ziphead, gangster, etc.

Study your preferred group well, You can go to the places they frequent, (un)dress as they (un)dress, eat and play and screw and suffer as they do. If you find that you really fit in, you don't have to leave &mdash you can MIGRATE (click here). Or you could be imprisoned, of course. And all because you expressed your opinions! Amazing!

DON'T JUST MOVE - MIGRATE!
  And Don't You Ever Come Back

I've mentioned many of the possible MOTIVATIONS (click here) for embarking on a journey. One of the strongest is the need or desire to migrate. Your ancestors have probably done so, and you can too. In fact, maybe you should.

The impetus for migration is often thought of in negative terms, ie you're escaping poverty, persecution, prison, conscription, glaciers-droughts-famines-plagues, demanding mates and creditors and lawyers, vampires, bad local TV, flesh-eating bacteria, high taxes, etc. Maybe you're bored or different or hated or wanted or unwanted. Maybe you just need new challenges, new frontiers, a new identity because you've successfully embezzled a fortune, a new tan. The reasons are nearly infinite.

It still boils down to this: You won't or can't solve your problems where you are, so you want to go elsewhere to excape them. Is this so wrong? North America is a continent of current and descended migrants, populated by generations of those who evaded their problems rather than deal with them at home. This explains much about these societies and their political systems — avoidance of responsibility is inherited and structural.

That's OK, 'cause you don't NEED an excuse to migrate. Just GO! Some 'migrants' (usually with economic motivations) are seasonal, going to a richer land for work, returning home regularly with their rewards. These are more long-cycle cummuters than actual immigrants. The true migrant GOES and doesn't look back, except maybe to see if the old homeland's secret police are following.

So pick a place you like, and remove yourself to it. And immerse yourself in its culture(s); otherwise, if you retain strong ties to your homeland and foster dreams of returning, you'll just be an xPat (expatriate), a sort of social half-breed that's not fully accepted by either society. You need to GO and STAY GONE. Please start now.

MEDICAL-SURGICAL VACATIONS:
  Bloody Good Fun Under the Sun

You may live in a developed nation with non-subsidized healthcare that costs a FORTUNE to access; ie, you're an USAnian. And you may need or want some medical-surgical procedure that your insurance doesn't cover, no matter how pitifully you beg. Or you may live in an civilized nation with subsidized healthcare that doesn't include your desired procedure, or you may be WAY down the list of those eligible. What the fock are you going to DO?!?!?

The answer, of course, is to head to some nation where your desired procedure is available and/or affordable. Many Canadians, Mexicans and Saudis come to the US for this very reason. But the US isn't otherwise an inexpensive place to stay (except for residents of nations with favorable currency exchange rates).

A number of third-world countries now offer medical-surgical vacation packages at very tempting prices. Go to Russia for eye and brain work, to Mexico for plastic surgery, to Central America and Southeast Asia for any number of sophisticated procedures. You can travel to exotic lands AND go under the scalpel AND enjoy an extended recuperation in a luxury resort for less than the cost of the procedure alone in the US. (Well, you might not have a luxurious stay in Russia, but they'll zip you through the OR fast and cheap.)

Many of the medics have trained at first-class first-world universities, and work in their home countries because they're comfortable there, enjoy lower living-working costs and better climate, and don't have to deal with the hostile US environment in regards to insurance and litigation and malpractice.

And don't just go yourself — many Central American states now feature resort-like convalescent and retirement facilities geared to aging Gringos and Gringas. Send your old parents to Guatemala, where their aging bones can soak up the tropical sun while they suck-up endless banana daquiris and guacamole puffs for a fraction of stateside costs! And with the proper arrangements, they should even be able to receive and cash their Social Security and pension checks.

The third world — it's in YOUR future too!