We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.
Marcel Proust
The journey is undertaken with one particular motivation: that of escape. Yet the experiences of the individual travellers can differ depending on their point of view, and even what they might learn whilst travelling between the two hotels.
Each traveller goes on the journey because they are dissatisfied with their everyday lives. Just like Halloway leaves the Garden City in J.B. Ballard's Ultimate City for ruined New York, the traveller leaves their day to day lives for our hotels, which they view as the utopian opposite to their dystopian lives.
This is a concept within their mind. Everyone's perception of a utopia and dystopia is different.
To the island dweller, the city seems like the place to be. Its bright lights and excitement seem like a haven after the monotonous silence and social constructs of small town island life.
To the city dweller, on the other hand, the island seems like a peaceful resort where man can reconnect with a clean, almost untouched environment, which hasn't become polluted with noise and waste like the city.
Our perspectives are all relative.
The journey might enhance the ideas of the traveller, and just be something for them to overcome before they reach their final destination, or it might challenge their ideas, and make them question whether what they left behind was really that dystopian at all.
In other words, the beauty and the experience of the journey might help the traveller to overcome their dualistic views of a utopia and a dystopia, and help them to appreciate their own environment more.
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Please see our Hotel Brief under the Brief label to gain more explanation of our overall concept.
