A Convergence of Awesome

I recently saw Midnight in Paris for the first time (omigod so freaking gooooood). It made me want to move to Paris. But Paris in the 1920s, when I could have wandered into a cafe and tripped over Picasso & Hemingway & Fitzgerald & Dali & T.S. Eliot. Because damn, how insane must that have been?

I feel like there are these places, these moments in history, when a place becomes a sort of artistic Mecca and there is a convergence of awesomeness. Just tell me where that convergence is today and I will move there tomorrow.

Do you think that kind of convergence is even possible in today's world? Because so much is done online where we are both more and less connected with the world around us.

It's strange how the internet seems to make us both more and less of many things. Anonymously people are more free with their opinions, but when our reputations are attached a single wrong word can make us a pariah when a careless comment goes viral. Author feuds are nothing new - not surprising in a business so subjective - but how many of Hawthorne's readers knew about his catty comments about female writers of his time? (Ever wondered how historical authors put the smack down? Check out this list.) Would old Nathaniel have been vilified on the 24-hr news networks as a misogynist? Would it have killed his career?

Aaaand, I've gotten way off topic. The truth is, I don't really want to live in Paris in the 1920s. I just want to be a part of a creative convergence and I'm afraid the only place those exist in our generation is online. Which, frankly, I find disappointing. I don't want to believe that we've lost the possibility for those convergences. Those artists' Meccas.

And here I am rambling about this on... where else? The internet. Oh, irony.