Predicted in 1985. Created in 2015. #LexusHover. https://t.co/ZCAGKVkA6L pic.twitter.com/pYLQU31R4w
— Lexus (@Lexus) October 21, 2015
I clicked the link feeling silly and remembering the feeling just after I told my parents, confusedly, about the amazing way that rabbits could now be grown from pellets. Live and Kicking, a Saturday morning magazine show for young people back in the day, announced fake news on April Fools’ Day. I was a small child, and I didn’t understand that Live and Kicking could lie to me, even though it did seem strange and unlikely. Just-add-water rabbits? I could tell that something in the air was wrong, but the air was all around me.
I clicked it thinking that I didn’t mind if they were tricking me, because I wanted to believe. Part of me was able to say, well what if hover boards are real now? What if they really, truly are? I’m glad that I’m living, and not dead. So trick me.
I clicked it and I watched the video and I felt glad and tender, not caring or either way sure if it was CG or RL or what, because stories make people do things. We see, we aim, we conquer. Automatic doors on Star Trek. Black lady astronauts on Star Trek. That angled bob on Major Kusanagi. Danny Zuko smoking, which is no longer allowed. Stories. Make people. Do things.
And I still can’t tell if a maglev hover park is a real thing that Lexus built really for real life for actual, and it just doesn’t matter to me. How far would a brand go to get press? Pretty far. But the story of what if they did and the film of modern skate men getting the feel of the instrument; it’s enough to find myself in 2015 being told that story, like it makes me tear up every time to read that well-shared Tumblr post about baby Hermione Granger reading Matilda and finding she could make books float as well. Stories make people tell more stories. Stories help people connect with themselves, and others, and the imagined Other (be it human, technological or wha).
Great Scott. I know. This is heavy.
People are heavy and hover boards don’t work on water, unless you’ve got power. Stories. Stories give us power.
Make stories. Make stories for people who need power.
