I did not sleep well in my hotel room in Truro, Nova Scotia. The sheets gave off the unmistakable scent of a hotel trying to establish an alibi. This is how hotels prove a room clean, replacing every possible smell with one enormous corporate smell called Morning Glacier or Alpine Innocence. But the perfume does not make the sheets feel cleaner – makes cleanliness theatrical. Lying there, unable to sleep, I thought of Barry Manilow performing in Las Vegas, which these days often pops up in my feed. He is still surrounded by lights, dancers, choreography and the machinery of youth. His face appears preserved by methods unavailable to ordinary fruit. His hair constructed off-site and lowered into position by crane. He performs movement routines that assume the knees willing participants. Age comes for everyone, including me and the person who designed the hotel\u2019s fragrance system. What makes things so uncomfortable is the enormous production insisting age is not occurring. This hotel saturates sheets in artificial springtime; Las Vegas with artificial continuation. I think it more moving allowing an older performer simply to be old and offer hotel sheets that smell like nothing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"