When Pedro first described his idea to me, a grand staircase in the middle of the playa, the name “Stairway to Nowhere” quickly came to mind. It had a ring and a snark to it, rolling off the tongue and making an illusive reference to “Stairway to Heaven.”
The problem is that as I thought about the concept of “nowhere” I thought of it as the absence of direction. “I’m on a road to nowhere” a path without direction. A sense of aimlessness from the absence of a destination. A burner friend of mine, Joe Buchman, then gave me an inspiration.
“You know,” he said. “You might be better off with nothing.”
“Come again?” I said.
“The word ‘nothing’ represents a void, the absence of anything. For some, it’s also an idea of God. For others, the infinite void is the cosmos, .. the universe.”
I turned this idea around several times. I liked that it wasn’t the obvious, nowhere. Nothing was much more provocative. When I talked to Pedro about it, he kind of grooved on it as well, smiling with mischief and delight.
“I like it!”
So that’s how it becomes The Stairway to Nothing, a vehicle to ascend to the void. In some ways, for some, a stairway to heaven.