The cacti in the background look artificial, and everything is warped and flipped out; the light seems fluorescent, as if the world were a twenty-four-hour supermarket.
He wanted to leave behind everything "artificial and conventional".
A ghost story should snap shut firmly, a door shut by an unseen hand: the otherworldly needs that artificial closure, or everything gets swallowed up in fear.
And for whatever reasons, this artificial depiction of everything going wrong -- of disaster lurking behind and leaping from every doorway -- provides you with a tremendous feeling of release.
Mr. Zern said: "Flamenco at its best -- at its most flamenco -- strips away everything artificial and inessential, in a struggle to reveal the deepest human truths.
Twice each year she issues the Milliker color chart and predicts the colors that she thinks will be hot the following year in fashion, cars, artificial flowers, and everything else.
Brook Zern, a flamenco specialist, once told Jennifer Dunning, of the Times, "Flamenco at its best — at its most flamenco — strips away everything artificial and inessential, in a struggle to reveal the deepest human truths.
"It looks like 'The Truman Show.' " She was referring to Seaside, the Florida Panhandle development that was the setting for the 1998 film starring Jim Carrey about an artificial paradise where everything is neat and everyone is happy.
Brook Zern, a flamenco specialist, once told Jennifer Dunning, of the Times, "Flamenco at its best at its most flamenco strips away everything artificial and inessential, in a struggle to reveal the deepest human truths.
