“Wel­come to the Desert of the Real,” muttered Laurence Fish­burne in 1999, prof­fer­ing a pill-tot­ing hand to lead us through the impend­ing eschat­on. Anoth­er dec­ade, anoth­er loom­ing onto­lo­gic­al sin­gu­lar­ity, and whose palm are we to grasp? A glance down Cour­tenay Place offers the obvi­ous answer: beck­on­ing on the threshold, a tower­ing Gan­dalf with more storeys than stor­ies, uncanny-val­ley sheen out­gleam­ing even Auck­land’s notori­ous fin­ger-wag­gling Santa Claus. There and back again indeed.

Mean­while, catty-corner to McK­el­lan’s beck­on­ing hole, a rather cat­ti­er but per­haps more unex­pec­ted jour­ney is already unfold­ing Down­stage: the quix­ot­ic quest of the intrep­id Richard Mer­os (here tak­ing the form of famil­i­ar sur­rog­ate Arthur Meek) into New Zeal­and’s myth­o­lo­gized heart­land in search of that most elu­sive nation­al treas­ure, the South­ern Man. And with the apo­ca­lypse once again breath­ing down our necks – no more money, no more room, no more envir­on­ment and pre­cious little time – surely someone’s got to extend a craggy hand. With all our wizened old ment­ors dead, dying or test­ing their wel­come, Mer­os’ quarry may be our last best hope.

In Tibet, they ven­er­ate their Old Men of the Moun­tains, scalps pre­served in rar­efied mon­as­tery air await­ing DNA veri­fic­a­tion; for traces of Mer­os’ even more elu­sive fig­ure, you’d be bet­ter off hol­ing up under the Film Archive with tapes of Crumpy’s old Hilux com­mer­cials. But Mer­os, two strikes down – not Helen Clark’s lov­er, still as male as ever – has noth­ing but time to his name, so it’s off Down South and into the Otago hills in search of the South­ern Man. A pseud­onym trudging rebranded (middle) earth in search of a myth: the desert of the real, indeed. Even if this one’s stud­ded with sagebrush and nev­er too far from a Speight’s back­drop.

When Guy Bal­lard went into the desert and up the moun­tain, he returned with pub­lish­ing clout and a fledgling belief sys­tem; Ale­jandro Jodorowsky took audi­ences to the sum­mit and left them with a multi-disc box set. It’s these footholds which Mer­os grasps in his own ascent, but his boon is as con­tem­por­ar­ily con­crete as Moses’ own gran­ite post-its: not just the Power­Point to end all Power­sPoint, but a Power­Point so end­lessly invent­ive it might just jus­ti­fy the trip.

For bur­ied with­in this Pan­dora’s .Ppt are boun­ties lim­it­less. Here is South­ern Man as a loom­ing colos­sus to dwarf Her­cules or Gil­gamesh; here the Enkidu of the Swandri grasps in a weathered hand the reins of worldly renew­al, would he but flick a wrist and set the bug­ger to gal­lop­ing. Here Olym­pus stands with Dau­mal’s Mount Ana­logue and Petrarch’s Mont Vent­oux as just one more Bas­tard ripe for the Knock­ing-Off.

Fish­burne and McK­el­lan’s ment­or-fig­ures have shown their true stature long ago: cor­ralled into end­less dances of dimin­ish­ing returns, they pon­ti­fic­ate emptily on the world’s LARGEST TURBO XXXTREME-SCREENS along­side the Dumble­dores and Obis-Wan and mis­cel­laneous Anthony Hop­kins after­thoughts. And mean­while Mer­os’ wizened gate­keep­er – too large for the screen, too hard for the world, too rough even for South­ern plains planed chem­ic­al-peel smooth for their clos­eup – shivers in the dark night of all our souls, pulling one more dog close as the embers of his bon­fire glim­mer in the time­less Otago dream­time.

Richard Mer­os Salutes the South­ern Man, at Down­stage until 1 Dec