We used to say that with ten clowns you could take over the city. It was Paris, the 80s, when for some reason a handful of artists came together, painters, writers, magicians, clowns, and created a new Golden Age, an artistic movement centered around the street theater scene in Beaubourg and Saint Germain des Pres. Later, the clowns would become the lead acts in Cirque du Soleil, so high was the level of talent, and I would end up writing screenplays with Roman Polanski and making films. But this was before any of us were known, when we were still struggling on the razor's edge of meaning and...

January 1, 2000, a Shinto healer fresh off the plane from Japan delivers an ancient, world-saving scroll to the UN, only to discover that on January 1, the United Nations is closed. Wise in the ways of the universe but unschooled in the ways of New York, the healer, the most balanced man in the city, manages to attract all the most-distracted, least-balanced people around: Chrissie Luna, the metaphysical makeup artist with the ticking biological clock, Reverend Y, the African-American ex-heavyweight contender turned spiritual leader of the Church of Apocalypse, Profanity-Allowed, and...