What one does becomes what one is. One cannot remain oneself without doing what one used to do. With courage, however, one may become someone else---if prodded by circumstances.
In the occupations that permit no accurate measurement of proficiency (e.g., in the movie industry), wasteful rent seeking occurs and dissipates most of the pleasure from future careers in these occupations. In occupations that permit precise measurement of proficiency (e.g., in mathematics), public ranking may extinguish the motivating power of delusion.
There is a hope in the simplicity of the makeshift, in the aspiration to simple luxuries. The set of the "Drowning Man" is imbued with its inhabitants' hopes. In America, where the production is set, one witnesses the extended phenotype of individuals first, and only then---and often less conspicuously---that of the civilisation. In this phenotype, there is more future than past. (There is some past, recent enough to remember or to pretend to remember.) Because there is more commonality in future than past, American narratives appeal broadly.
Most art focuses on the universally accessible themes: work, power, sex, love. The omitted themes may be variations on these universally accessible themes or may be too intricate to quickly engage the audience and hence might be unduly neglected. Alternatively, these universally accessible themes may constitute a universal language and address indirectly the seemingly omitted themes.
The accomplishments of the "Drowned Man" are not in the quality of obstacle dancing, close-range acting, and clockwork crooning. The production is a world that one either wishes to inhabit (and reinhabit) or one does not. On the set, one does not walk among the gods of a National Ballet, but one does walk among those who are quite proficient in expressing themselves. Any slight imperfection in the delivery adds to authenticity.
Masked and ignored, one is first encouraged to observe shamelessly and then is tempted to engage. The world is David-Lynch-esque but not David-Lych-like, dimmed but not dark, peculiar without being perverse.
