It is not an understatement to say that I felt like I had been shot out of a cannon when it was over. And, I wasn’t even the one who had been floating in water for a week. Merely one of many dedicated people behind the scenes. It was an extraordinary experience in many ways, frustrating in others, but always immediate and very “you are here now”.
My perspectives on media are a combination of the ideas of people I respect, such as Douglas Rushkoff, and my personal observations from working in the entertainment and media industry. I just spent two weeks in a fishbowl of media frenzy, and it gave me the opportunity to see and experience the mediasphere up close and personal. 
A production assistant found himself the subject of a big photo in the Daily News, and each day, the place we called work was in the news, and we were too. I must have gotten a dozen phone calls or e-mails from people saying they’d seen me on the TV over the past week.
Without going into specifics, the overriding truth that comes forth is that news media is an organic and extremely unreliable process, in that it has a natural flow to it, like that of a broken conversation that moves from person to person and is slightly altered, exaggerated, as it progress from mouth to mouth and ear to ear. The media is people. And, people “embellish” the truth to make it more “interesting”. Odd, considering that the event of convern at the moment didn’t need any embellishing. It was reality to the tenth power all by itself.
What makes modern media so unreliable is it’s self love and self importance and its relationship to the public. So many within the media biz truly feel that they make the media moment, and not the other way around. As if, a man floating in a water filled sphere for a week wouldn’t be news without their involvement covering the event, which isn’t entirely true. Media events existed before mass media and the press.
The other side of the media equation is the publics fascination, ney, worship of celebrity. Everyone wants to be a star. Everyone wants to touch a star, and the media people know this, and they use it. From hangers on to fans, if you are the focus of a media virus, and the man of the moment, everyone wants a piece of you, of your time and to be seen with you. It was more than odd, to say the least, to deal with the usual “VIP’s” etc, while the person they attach themselves to was living in a bubble, literally. Often, for me, being responsible for so much behind the scenes, this seemed incongruous with the reality and the importance and gravity of the entire sphere as a working life support system for David Blaine. It was a complicated and delicate machinery and group of people that kept him alive and healthy. We all had to keep that in focus constantly.
Media is not always reality. Sometimes it reflects it, or parts of it. But, the bits and pieces it does reflect are just that- bits and pieces.
It’s important to remember that there was a man within that sphere and he was often in pain and he was doing something not only uncommon but unique. The circus fascination and nearly gleeful observation that his skin was peeling off that so many in the public and the media brought to the event let that be forgotten somehow.
Shame that.
To my mind, in the end, whether he succeeded in helding his breath to break the record would have been the cherry on top of the cake, but the cake was still excellent. How many people can you think of who could live in a bubble of water for a week eating only water, gatorade and pedialyte?
I know of only one. Think he’s brave or think he’s crazy, he did it. Not many amongst us can say we’ve truly pushed the limits of human endurance. For that, David Blaine deserves recognition.
