THE MIND OF THE TOURIST

The world is being transformed by tourism. Places are visited by thousands, changing ordinary life with a concentrated shambles of crowds of visitors, surging, intent on experiencing whatever the brochures proclaim to be the ‘attractions’ - come hell or high water. Other centres are being transformed, redesigned in order to make them ‘attractions’ so that they can be a part of the profitable tourist circuit: see – https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-kenilworth-dunny.html * The success of a few places drives others to transform their identity to reap in the profits that are argued as being “good for everyone!” Some disagree. The concern is not only that the integrity and wonder of these places are challenged, but that the tourist has ambitions that seem alien to the simple respect that beauty, wonder, and intrigue requires, turning these ‘attractions’ into quirky spectacles for indulgent entertainment: killing the thing loved comes to mind, but here the ‘love’ is only that illusory promise made explicit in the promotional material that tells folk what to see, and how to see: see - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2019/11/architectural-seeing.html

The characteristics of a tourist have been explored as actions and activities: - see: http://springbrooklocale.blogspot.com/2012/06/who-or-what-is-tourist.html  A recent experience has shown how the state of the tourist mind is revealed in tourist speech. This text explores a few types of these verbal outputs to highlight the frivolous, indulgent carelessness of tourists and tourism. One has to wonder why the world is so keen to accommodate this mindlessness. One supposes that it is purely greed; for easy profit. The speech reveals a state of mind that cares little for any integral aesthetic or poetic richness of place, or for anything that might emotionally or personally engage in either the present situation or its circumstance.

There is nothing but a bland void between feeling and place, a gap that becomes filled with speech involving parallels, commentaries, and stories stimulated by way of reminiscences of other completed journeys, now deleted from the bucket list to join the egocentric, boastful schedule of MY trips that becomes a mine for smart references and remarks to be used in other places, all prompted by analogy or memory, or a muddled mingling of the two. Learning and understanding are things completely alien to the experience and intent of the tourist.

These incidents are further complicated, maybe completed, by distractions with more everyday yarns that involve personal histories of home, friends and family. These endless anecdotal reverberations continue in spite of the wonder and beauty to be experienced in the latest, newly-visited destination drawn from the whims of the bucket list of desire, that even sometimes anticipate future activities to be spoken about with as much promotional pride and eagerness as the past. Rarely does the present have any relevance other than as a prompt, a stage for the verbalisaitons.

The most important matter is that one must be heard; that one's past experiences must be regurgitated for others to be drawn into the personal world of ME. It is this world that continually gets explored and exposed in spite of present place, its mysteries and wonder – of being there. The disregard is astonishing. Poetry is grabbed, if at all, as facts that become a stimulus for a crescendo of other facts and personal experiences to be incorporated into the proclamations at another time and place. The blurb of the tourist operator or the guidebook is spruiked again as knowing chat immediately after being first heard or read, learnedly, as if one was the expert, when truly only bland ignorance reigns. The mind seems to be numb to the new, to remain as a void, an echo chamber of past influences that reveal MY brilliant journeys in life, MY tourist presence: “Look at MY selfie at . . . ” Specific feeling for place is non-existent; the state of being stays rooted in the personal past: ME! One can see the present becoming pasts for the next trip, not for any experiential delight that might change anything or anyone, but just as more blurb. The core concern is NEXT!

Movement is the heart of tourism, momentum; it is inherent in the words 'tour' and 'touring'. Consider the silliness of a cruise ship that stayed at one location for two weeks;# the sheer frustration. The best distraction is the stimulus, the next one, the driving force for tourist interest and intrigue. This becomes part of a list of experiences that then gets regurgitated into other entertainments to reveal one's indulgences, one's cleverness in the diversity of destinations - of ME and MY journeys. It is as if one does not know what to do with quiet stillness. These asides become the core chat that completes the challenging void of nothingness that lies between the world of wonder and soul, where doubt thrives in a rich uncertainty of transformative possibilities that seem to frighten, to scare with their challenge. The uncertain is crushed; the quiet is shattered. It is a state of mind that gets smudged into the oblivion of fact with repetitive reminiscences and yarns that seem to be anchors to ensure one is never exposed to the silence of life, the stillness of being, the test of doubt - my self.

The tourist moves on and on relentlessly avoiding the intimacy of nothingness with distraction after distraction, with any gaps being filled with stories of past experiences stimulated by being there, somewhere different and new, whatever and wherever this might be; for example, in a beautiful country, now brilliantly sunny and fresh after a rainy day, one hears:
"Isn't this wonderful! We have been so lucky with the weather! We had a similar few days in Italy, just before the floods. It had been raining for weeks before we arrived, then it cleared up. Shortly after we left, Italy experienced unseasonal torrential rains that flooded the old town we were staying in. We were sooo lucky. We had a wonderful train journey to Prague; overnight. Oh, its such a looovely city. We had two weeks there. Yeah. The days were cool, but dry. There was no need for the brolly. Mmmmm."

There are more examples from places just as stunning, likely to be anywhere:
"Oh, I must remember to get Little Johnny a T-shirt. He loves his T-shirts. We get him one every place we go. He wore his favourite croc T-shirt to his school function. He had to send a photo to me. He was sooo proud. Yeah. Oh, look, a golfer. Is that a golf course? It's lovely. We love to play golf. It is such an interesting game. We played with Bill and Jean when they came to France with us. It was near Versailles. Such a grand place. Isn't the road straight!"

"Look at the wall. It reminds me of the time we were in South America. They had walls just like that; well, similar. We loooved Chile. Jack and Maureen were with us. We had a week there, then travelled on to Brazil. They have big forests there; the biggest in the world. We went on a river cruise. Gosh, Maureen nearly fell in. It was winter, so the days were mild. We prefer to travel in the better seasons. We had a marvelous trip with Jack and Jean two years ago when we went skiing in Switzerland. They had massive snow falls that year. We were sooo lucky. We got Little Johnny a T-shirt from Zurich. It had mountains on it. Little Johnny loooves mountains. He did a drawing of some for me once. It is still pinned up on the wall."

‘Verbal diarrhea’ is the everyday phrase for such gabble. Meanwhile, the world of the new journey passes with all of its marvellous wonders and new delights.
"What are we having for dinner tonight? We'll get some paper and write a list. When we were on a fishing trip with Jack and Maureen, we made lists every day. The fishing was good. Jack lost a real good one. Gosh he was angry. Where are we? What's that? Maureen was not so keen on fishing."

Then, astonishingly, one experiences the same questions and commentary the next day as the same things are passed. It is as if the present is truly ephemeral, leaving nothing behind at all; that the immediate experience stimulates a specific response from a catalogue of comments.

“Better late than never - BLN, ha!” “This conservatory must have made a difference” - all as the beauty of the land and seascape stretched into a mist of distant wonder. “Yeah, Bill and Viv have a conservatory . . .” The pattern and patter of speech is relentless. The source is sometimes made explicit: "That reminds me of . . . " - a statement that is then developed with other memories and associations that always relate to past experiences. When nothing arises as a reminiscence, the blurb becomes a running commentary on what is before the eyes. “Oh! A shopping centre! It’s like the one we saw at . . . ; Look at the dog; it’s a wonder it is . . . ; That’s a big hospital; I wonder how many . . . ; the fields are lovely, just like those near . . . ; what are they growing?” There is always something different to be said, as if every silent void must be filled with verbal stuff: noise – new distractions. The state of mind that involves itself in this terrible strategy seems to seek the safety of other 'ME's, if not the bragging rights about MY near-empty bucket list. It is a mind dragging its world around with it, distracted by memory, other places and people, other experiences, completely indifferent to the present. The only thing that seems to matter is the bucket list - the ticking of the boxes.

One can see the same pattern in the behaviour of the guest, the visitor, whom one may not have seen for some months; strangely, soon after the first greeting, when one sees the visitor on the mobile phone calling a relative for a chat. The message is distinct: I am not engaged with you, or interested in you. My mind is on something/somebody else. I have and desire no engagement with you as a person, a present being. I do not seek your eyes, your identity. I am interested in elsewhere.

So too is the tourist. This individual is not anywhere; is not travelling to be involved in wonder or delight. The tourist is never seeking spiritual revelation. Tourists glean snibbets of tour-guide facts that can become a part of the repetitive repertoire that transforms into void-filling chat that highlights everything 'I'  have done. The 'I' seeks no 'Thou', merely the singular 'I' highlighted as ME and MY world, that set of stuff that is carried around to stuff up everything delicate and wondrous with comfortable padding that can suppress all questions and challenges that harsh beauty can bring, making everything neutered and comfortable, using safe pasts that have been, and that can identify ME as the core of interest. Everything is relative, matched, bettered: “Look at the rainbow!” There is never any silent awe in perception; everything is exclamatory. “Oh, when we were in Norway we saw a double rainbow” . . . It is like the double or nothing bet, always better, bigger, grander, more clever - elsewhere. The latent boast is that MY bucket list is shorter than yours, and is growing shorter faster. “Next year we are going to . . . The following year we will be in . . . for four months” . . . etc., etc. This is one of the few times that futures get mentioned; it is usually a grasp at something to say, or a response to counter someone else’s stated plans, to outdo them.

The strategy is truly relentless. Everything gets the same response that engages the mind with otherness that can endure rather than having to face the ephemeral, ecstatic delights of the unknown spirit that can challenge and engage with doubt as well as delight. The constant search for distracting drama becomes the crass involvement with exaggerated entertainment, with fabricated fancies that force attention onto anything else but the quiet void of life and its resonance, the present, just as all of the worldly observations of the tourist do.

Little wonder that the world has become so blatantly crude in its effort to attract and accommodate tourists when this is the state of mind it seeks to interest. The solution lies in individual responsibility – each individual’s ability to respond; but . . . see: IT’S AMAZING HOW MAES HOWE AMAZES - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2020/02/its-amazing-how-maeshowe-amazes.html

* Bilbao was consciously transformed to attract visitors, with its Guggenheim being the centrepiece. It worked! Barcelona and Venice are other places with an inherent interest that are being spoiled by the enormous crowds of tourists that arrive daily, every day. Gaudi’s cathedral in Barcelona attracts 12,000 visitors a day!
# It is interesting to note the frustration of passengers on the cruise ship that is quarantined in Japan for two weeks because of the novel corona virus – (February 2020).