A bunch of ideas that didn’t pan out into full posts.
1) Some people believe that once enough emotional energy is invested into something, that thing starts to become real. The thing could be an idea, or a place, or even a person. The idea is that if enough people spend enough time thinking about something, or believing in it, it takes on a sort of life on it’s own.
Some folks even think that this is where gods come from. That they are the manifestation of the emotional outpouring of their followers. There was a movie called Destiny Turns on the Radio which explored this idea with the avatar of Las Vegas traveling around dispensing and taking away luck on a whim. They called him an Animus.
I think Sam Elliot is one of those, but for cowboy movies.