The acronym EWS is a big give away to the topography of the film. The missing letter from the set of E, W and S is 'N' where it stands for North. Well, North isn't exactly missing on the streets of Kubrick's Manhattan., Rather, the absence of North, as a symbolic compass, is firmly implied by the vicious re-cycle of infinite regression detailed in Bill's travels around NYC and environs. Being lost is a way of life on the loopy streets of EWS. In this way, EWS is a scathing criticism of the universal framework heralded by the Cartesian/Newtonian model and a document to end of this same delusion. Within the quadratic model, Kubrick says, it's all about being LOST. As long as we are deluded by the notion that we live on the exterior of a spheroid that is but one such body in a rapidly disintegrating and unbounded cloud of gas, we are always impossibly lost. When teachers tell our kids kiddies that the polynomial equation is muchos importanto they aren't lying... well not exactly. The quadratic model for thought, artificially modulated to flummox the middle class comprehension of natural science, is imposed through mass education onto each and every human value system. Sex. Money. Love. Family and Politics. All of it a shell game. A 4d Rubik's Cube. A Devil's Quadrille. The specific value of the geography of Kubrick's exteriors and the applied force of the North in EWS will be explored a bit further along, but for now, stuff this in your Christmas stocking: someone is rearranging our world while we sleep. He's been mean to children and his methods are down right Catholic. So you'd damn well better watch out, kiddies.
