The Big Picture and the Closeup

Williams provides a musical metaphor for that wonderful dream we’ve all had sometime, in which we learn to fly. And that dream is in turn a serviceable metaphor for the erotic ecstasy of Superman and Lois. That was how I wanted to think of myself then: freed from the bonds of conventional morality, accompanying professional success with sexual release, floating high above everything.

The accepted metaphor for this coordination of the various branches of the law is “the seamless web.” But the tight four-part harmony of the Manhattan Transfer would have been closer to the mark.