A top ten list seemed like a good idea, until I made my list and came up with eleven indispensable, irreductible items I couldn't remove. So, in the spirit that rules are made to be broken, I give you #9.5 of the Ten Things I Will Miss Most about Kalamazoo: Bell's Two-Hearted Ale.
Delicious on draft, even better in a bottle, but I'm getting ahead of myself: let's start with the label, shall we? Two watercolor ying-yanging trout, just as you would see them if you were looking straight down on them from the surface of a stream. Named for the Two-Hearted River, which Hemingway named a story after (although the river in the story isn't the Two-Hearted at all, as it turns out). For the longest time I thought they were morel mushrooms instead of trout, but we'll chalk that up to I can't get near the label without drinking copious amounts of the beer it's identifying.
I won't pretend that I've got some expert palate that can tell hops from barley or whether a beer has a crisp finish and whatnot. I've never much gone in for that sort of talk. All I know is that this beer is, to my mind, damned tasty. It possesses just the right balance of spicy, tingly, rich, toasty and sweet. It's a playful grizzly bear cub of a beer. It's a 1920's bungalow of a beer. It's a man in the shirt printed with tiny flowers whose masculinity nobody questions of a beer.
And, at 7%, one pint is enough to get me pleasantly, inconspicuously buzzed.
I was beginning to feel a bit depressed about having to abandon my favorite beer, until I learned that the B-movie-themed pizza parlor and beer emporium on the corner of my new street in Virginia has Two-Hearted Ale on draught. Which means that, once I move away, my proximity to Two-Hearted Ale will actually be greater than it is even now. Although I have to confess, I experienced a twinge of disappointment that it was there, once I had taken the trouble to squeeze it onto the Top Ten List at position 9.5. I am happy to report that, on draft and 750 miles away from its origin, it tastes a little thin and bitter. I wouldn't want it to be as good as it is here at home, but instead a reasonable simulacrum that leaves me an excuse to come back.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
in other news
It's strange, not to mention a bit desolate, sitting in this empty apartment. People have been good about stopping by, some with external hard drives chock full of media to keep me entertained until the big moving day actually arrives. The lack of sensory stimulus in my barren three rooms makes it easy enough to concentrate on finishing my thesis, anyway, but somehow it still isn't even beginning to sink in.
I turned in my introduction and conclusion late last night, which means that for the next week all I have to do is revise and wait, wait and revise. I am not yet conscious of having written a book, another moment of realization that I'm curious to see when it arrives (if you reread that and find it grammatically lacking, SCREW YOU! Which one of us just wrote a BOOK?!)
I miss my neighbs. It was wonderful and important and maybe even necessary to see him surrounded by my furniture in our new apartment -- which is lovely, moreso than we had ever anticipated, and when I'm standing there I really feel that somehow I've finally arrived, in that grownup sense of the word. But so far it's just separation and distance and lack of furniture. He's got the posh apartment and the home goods, and it has not registered that the reason for that is that certain events in my life led us to choose Norfolk, Virginia as a common destination, and that he just happened to get there first.
Surprisingly, so far I've missed relatively few of my material possessions. If you've ever been to my apartment you'll probably remember that it was chock-full of furniture, somewhere between cozy and cramped, and that there was scarcely a vertical surface without something strategically positioned to detract attention from the walls (which are painted a delectable shade called "Oyster"). I now have two TV tables, a desk chair, a suitcase, an air mattress and a loveseat which will soon be turned out to stud on the front lawn. Occasionally I reach for something where it used to be, visualizing for example my favorite pen inside its desk drawer, then realize that the desk, therefore the drawer, therefore the pen, now reside across several state lines. Only then does it hit me that, within a matter of weeks, so will I, and I have a moment of vertigo.
In the meantime, for reasons I can only imagine exist in some unexplored part of my mind, I feel a little as though this is my full reality, as though this is all the stuff I have ever owned, life has always been like this and will continue indefinitely this way. It's not bad, really. I don't feel lost or confused. It's as if I'm going through a breakup without all the pain. It's hard to motivate myself to do domestic stuff like grocery shopping, cooking and laundry; much easier now that it's just me and the dog to be like, oh well, I'll just eat Frankenberry and sit in the dark.
Okay, back to work.
I turned in my introduction and conclusion late last night, which means that for the next week all I have to do is revise and wait, wait and revise. I am not yet conscious of having written a book, another moment of realization that I'm curious to see when it arrives (if you reread that and find it grammatically lacking, SCREW YOU! Which one of us just wrote a BOOK?!)
I miss my neighbs. It was wonderful and important and maybe even necessary to see him surrounded by my furniture in our new apartment -- which is lovely, moreso than we had ever anticipated, and when I'm standing there I really feel that somehow I've finally arrived, in that grownup sense of the word. But so far it's just separation and distance and lack of furniture. He's got the posh apartment and the home goods, and it has not registered that the reason for that is that certain events in my life led us to choose Norfolk, Virginia as a common destination, and that he just happened to get there first.
Surprisingly, so far I've missed relatively few of my material possessions. If you've ever been to my apartment you'll probably remember that it was chock-full of furniture, somewhere between cozy and cramped, and that there was scarcely a vertical surface without something strategically positioned to detract attention from the walls (which are painted a delectable shade called "Oyster"). I now have two TV tables, a desk chair, a suitcase, an air mattress and a loveseat which will soon be turned out to stud on the front lawn. Occasionally I reach for something where it used to be, visualizing for example my favorite pen inside its desk drawer, then realize that the desk, therefore the drawer, therefore the pen, now reside across several state lines. Only then does it hit me that, within a matter of weeks, so will I, and I have a moment of vertigo.
In the meantime, for reasons I can only imagine exist in some unexplored part of my mind, I feel a little as though this is my full reality, as though this is all the stuff I have ever owned, life has always been like this and will continue indefinitely this way. It's not bad, really. I don't feel lost or confused. It's as if I'm going through a breakup without all the pain. It's hard to motivate myself to do domestic stuff like grocery shopping, cooking and laundry; much easier now that it's just me and the dog to be like, oh well, I'll just eat Frankenberry and sit in the dark.
Okay, back to work.
the kalamazoo countdown begins (#10: 10th floor)
So, in an effort to begin reconciling myself to the fact that I almost don't live here anymore, I've decided to use the next three weeks or so to count down the top ten things I will miss about Kalamazoo. Although there are so many things happening all at the same time in my life right now, most of them worthy of at least one lengthy blog post, I feel that publicly discussing the aspects of Kalamazoo I will most sorely pine for will be a therapeutic means of letting go of the town where I've been living for twelve (gasp!) years.
It is my intention to post ten times in the three weeks I have left here, counting down my days and my experiences, giving you a brief description of what it is I find so wonderful about each of the places or things that made the list. So, without further ado, I give you the beginning of the end, and it seems the most auspicious of beginnings for this countdown that the 10th floor of Sprau Tower on WMU's campus is #10 on my list.
Now that I think of myself as being from Kalamazoo, it's hard for me to remember at times that college is what originally brought me here. Despite my lack of school spirit, I suppose I've spent more time at WMU than several of my professors and certainly more than most of my friends. For that reason, something from Western needed to be on my list, and Sprau Tower is probably my favorite thing about WMU.
It's pretty simple, really: from the 10th floor of Sprau Tower you can see the whole town. You get this amazing panorama with downtown pretty much visible behind the football stadium, across East Campus and the Crazy-Persons' Tower, down Stadium Drive, over to Video Hits, across the Valley dormitories and over the treetops of what's left of the Basswood preserve, and over all the little turrets and domes of K college. It's particularly spectacular in the fall because it's town, except with these incredible swathes of orange, red and yellow bursting out in every direction. At night it's usually deserted, and the Little Skyline That Could looks almost formidable from up there in the dark. In a good snowstorm, the town totally disappears and you feel like you're in a giant snowglobe, and during a lightning storm you feel like the gatekeeper and the keymaster rolled into one.
There's a kitchenette and comfy chairs, and nobody really ever goes up there except for the occasional janitor or English professor. Plus, you have to have keys, so I get to be the one who bestows this view upon the uninitiated, one of the few perks of being a graduate assistant sharing an office that used to be a storage closet with four other people.
So that's it, I guess, for #10. Stay tuned.
It is my intention to post ten times in the three weeks I have left here, counting down my days and my experiences, giving you a brief description of what it is I find so wonderful about each of the places or things that made the list. So, without further ado, I give you the beginning of the end, and it seems the most auspicious of beginnings for this countdown that the 10th floor of Sprau Tower on WMU's campus is #10 on my list.
Now that I think of myself as being from Kalamazoo, it's hard for me to remember at times that college is what originally brought me here. Despite my lack of school spirit, I suppose I've spent more time at WMU than several of my professors and certainly more than most of my friends. For that reason, something from Western needed to be on my list, and Sprau Tower is probably my favorite thing about WMU.
It's pretty simple, really: from the 10th floor of Sprau Tower you can see the whole town. You get this amazing panorama with downtown pretty much visible behind the football stadium, across East Campus and the Crazy-Persons' Tower, down Stadium Drive, over to Video Hits, across the Valley dormitories and over the treetops of what's left of the Basswood preserve, and over all the little turrets and domes of K college. It's particularly spectacular in the fall because it's town, except with these incredible swathes of orange, red and yellow bursting out in every direction. At night it's usually deserted, and the Little Skyline That Could looks almost formidable from up there in the dark. In a good snowstorm, the town totally disappears and you feel like you're in a giant snowglobe, and during a lightning storm you feel like the gatekeeper and the keymaster rolled into one.
There's a kitchenette and comfy chairs, and nobody really ever goes up there except for the occasional janitor or English professor. Plus, you have to have keys, so I get to be the one who bestows this view upon the uninitiated, one of the few perks of being a graduate assistant sharing an office that used to be a storage closet with four other people.
So that's it, I guess, for #10. Stay tuned.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
The trouble with me
So he wants to know, this former old friend of mine, whether I'm up for a "brief, potentially clumsy chat".
No, I am not.
The last time we spoke I was painfully aware that he was giving me some kind of last chance to prove myself. As a friend I had been placed on probationary status. Whatever it was he needed to hear for me to be redeemed I must have failed to deliver it. Somehow when we talk it always ends up with him saying, "you know what the trouble with you is?"
Yes, as a matter of fact I do.
The trouble with me is that I sometimes forget that I have a right not to like certain people. I go through life as if because of my many imperfections I have a responsibility to like people, to disregard their unkindnesses, to be the bigger person, the one who always forgives and gets along with everybody. I forget that I am not the only person with faults. I forget that I can choose which people I keep closest to me. I forget that I do not owe each and every person in my life my unswerving friendship and unconditional love.
The trouble with me is that, for years now, I have listened to each and every person who wanted to tell me what the trouble with me is and damn it, I've believed every single one. The trouble with me is that, if you tell me that I'm horrible, ugly, stupid and useless, I will walk away from this conversation believing you, and in every encounter I have I will wonder whether this is what everyone is secretly thinking.
The trouble with me is that I can hear your opinion about your favorite band, a Chinese restaurant or politics, and I can decide whether to agree with or dismiss it, but I cannot simply dismiss your opinion about me. I will trust any theory advanced about me, even by people peripheral at best to my life, even by people who need me to play the villain in the stories they tell themselves, before I will trust my own sense of who I am and what I stand for.
That is the trouble with me, old friend, and that is what I have decided to change: a transformation that begins, unlike most, with not returning a phone call.
No, I am not.
The last time we spoke I was painfully aware that he was giving me some kind of last chance to prove myself. As a friend I had been placed on probationary status. Whatever it was he needed to hear for me to be redeemed I must have failed to deliver it. Somehow when we talk it always ends up with him saying, "you know what the trouble with you is?"
Yes, as a matter of fact I do.
The trouble with me is that I sometimes forget that I have a right not to like certain people. I go through life as if because of my many imperfections I have a responsibility to like people, to disregard their unkindnesses, to be the bigger person, the one who always forgives and gets along with everybody. I forget that I am not the only person with faults. I forget that I can choose which people I keep closest to me. I forget that I do not owe each and every person in my life my unswerving friendship and unconditional love.
The trouble with me is that, for years now, I have listened to each and every person who wanted to tell me what the trouble with me is and damn it, I've believed every single one. The trouble with me is that, if you tell me that I'm horrible, ugly, stupid and useless, I will walk away from this conversation believing you, and in every encounter I have I will wonder whether this is what everyone is secretly thinking.
The trouble with me is that I can hear your opinion about your favorite band, a Chinese restaurant or politics, and I can decide whether to agree with or dismiss it, but I cannot simply dismiss your opinion about me. I will trust any theory advanced about me, even by people peripheral at best to my life, even by people who need me to play the villain in the stories they tell themselves, before I will trust my own sense of who I am and what I stand for.
That is the trouble with me, old friend, and that is what I have decided to change: a transformation that begins, unlike most, with not returning a phone call.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Keeping up with the Jeanses
Say that, for the last two years running, you have spent your summers basically getting paid to live with your best friend in a desert paradise. Next say that, this year, you can’t, because you’re too busy with your thesis even to post on your blog every once in a while and far too poor to fly to Mexico. Now say that she announces she’s going to Montréal to study English for the summer, a city you’ve always wanted to see and which you’ll soon be living twelve extra hours away from. Grammatical quandaries aside, tell me, what would you do?
Here in Montréal, people are incredibly stylish. There are poor people, of course, but in general it seems that poverty is considered extremely unfashionable. Even the Mormons are setting aside the ubiquitous black backpack for a sleek satchel, and schnazzing up the white-button-down-and-black-pants look with a snappy necktie. It’s intimidating at first, but it turns out that people here are very very very friendly. They love their city and want you to love it, too, no matter how you’re dressed, and they’ll even tolerate your crappy French if you speak crappy French (which I do).
For instance: tonight we were exhausted after, oh, I dunno, six solid hours of walking (on top of yesterday’s twelve), and we wanted to grab some dinner someplace close by. We asked a girl walking down the street if she knew of a good Indian place nearby, and she said no, but tell you what: go into that hotel over there, and ask for Joey, the concierge. Tell him Maria sent you, and he’ll find you a restaurant. So we did that, and Joey magically procured the business hours for “the best Indian restaurant in the city” for us, then gave us directions. “You see that bank there, on the corner?” he asked. Sure, we said. “Okay,” he said. “Turn down that street, go past the bank, and it’s the first restaurant on the left.”
The first restaurant on the left, people.
Montréal is a city of baby-daddies. I haven’t scanned my photos thoroughly, but I’m confident that in the background of at least a couple I will find young professional fathers pushing their kids in strollers or carrying them around on their shoulders, because you couldn’t throw a rock in Montréal without hitting a baby in the arms of some tall, stubbly francophone. It’s infuriatingly sexy.
The next time I film a zombie movie, I will definitely set it in Montréal. Due to the long, miserable winters, an entire parallel urbanscape has developed underground. It haphazardly connects the Métro stations across the city, and in the event of zombie attack you could just seal it off and live down there for months and still shop at American Apparel whenever you wanted. Of course, with so many entrances and exits it would be impossible to keep the zombies out forever, lucky for my plotline.
Nohemí and I have walked all over this city, and we have brought one another up to date, and like always, it feels like no time has elapsed since the last time we were together. And, like always, we have talked about a million things that make me think, and make me think that maybe I think more than other people do sometimes, and that I like that about myself and about my friends. We swapped memories about our friend who died last year, and somehow it felt as though by evoking him from a café-térrace hundreds of miles from his or her or my home, we put something important into the world for a moment.
Here in Montréal, people are incredibly stylish. There are poor people, of course, but in general it seems that poverty is considered extremely unfashionable. Even the Mormons are setting aside the ubiquitous black backpack for a sleek satchel, and schnazzing up the white-button-down-and-black-pants look with a snappy necktie. It’s intimidating at first, but it turns out that people here are very very very friendly. They love their city and want you to love it, too, no matter how you’re dressed, and they’ll even tolerate your crappy French if you speak crappy French (which I do).
For instance: tonight we were exhausted after, oh, I dunno, six solid hours of walking (on top of yesterday’s twelve), and we wanted to grab some dinner someplace close by. We asked a girl walking down the street if she knew of a good Indian place nearby, and she said no, but tell you what: go into that hotel over there, and ask for Joey, the concierge. Tell him Maria sent you, and he’ll find you a restaurant. So we did that, and Joey magically procured the business hours for “the best Indian restaurant in the city” for us, then gave us directions. “You see that bank there, on the corner?” he asked. Sure, we said. “Okay,” he said. “Turn down that street, go past the bank, and it’s the first restaurant on the left.”
The first restaurant on the left, people.
Montréal is a city of baby-daddies. I haven’t scanned my photos thoroughly, but I’m confident that in the background of at least a couple I will find young professional fathers pushing their kids in strollers or carrying them around on their shoulders, because you couldn’t throw a rock in Montréal without hitting a baby in the arms of some tall, stubbly francophone. It’s infuriatingly sexy.
The next time I film a zombie movie, I will definitely set it in Montréal. Due to the long, miserable winters, an entire parallel urbanscape has developed underground. It haphazardly connects the Métro stations across the city, and in the event of zombie attack you could just seal it off and live down there for months and still shop at American Apparel whenever you wanted. Of course, with so many entrances and exits it would be impossible to keep the zombies out forever, lucky for my plotline.
Nohemí and I have walked all over this city, and we have brought one another up to date, and like always, it feels like no time has elapsed since the last time we were together. And, like always, we have talked about a million things that make me think, and make me think that maybe I think more than other people do sometimes, and that I like that about myself and about my friends. We swapped memories about our friend who died last year, and somehow it felt as though by evoking him from a café-térrace hundreds of miles from his or her or my home, we put something important into the world for a moment.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Breezewood
In his book Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, French anthropologist Marc Augé explores the proliferation in contemporary society of spaces such as airports, supermarkets, hotel rooms -- the sort of transient regions that fail to impress upon us a sense of individual or local identity. I have to admit that I have always found non-places sort of fascinating. I was never any good at my first job as a chambermaid; at age fifteen I would already linger too long in each hotel room, seeking out the tiny traces of uniqueness left behind by the previous night's guests. If I were anything of a photographer, I'd love to hang around non-places and photograph everyday life there.
Not long ago, I had occasion to visit one non-place that, it occured to me while I was there, has figured relatively prominently in the last several years of my life: Breezewood, Pennsylvania. I say relatively prominently, because as a girl from the Midwest I seldom have reason to end up in Breezewood -- I don't even know anyone from Pennsylvania -- yet I realized that I've been there four times in the past decade, and that my joy in arriving there each time has been surpassed only by my joy of leaving. The reason I have visited Breezewood so many times is that it is almost exactly halfway between Kalamazoo, Michigan and Williamsburg, Virginia. It was only on my last trip through Breezewood that I began to reflect on exactly how often I have made this drive.
I am not the only one who stops in Breezewood. In fact, people flock to it. As near as I can tell, the entire town's identity coalesces around the fact that it is halfway between everything, and possesses the most diverse array of gas/food/lodging for miles in any direction. This non-town is full of non-places where travelers can fulfill basic needs at a staggering number of franchises. Or, if they prefer, they can dine on the traditional local cuisine, scrapple: après hot-dogs, a dispirited blob of gray non-meat served with eggs and choice of toast or grits. Here's the thing: although everything in Breezewood is characterized by that numbing mediocrity that makes me ill at ease wherever I encounter it, I am nonetheless grateful for the chance to empty my bladder, stretch my legs, fill my gas tank, rehydrate and choose from a greater variety of unwholesome road food options, knowing that I am either slightly less than halfway there or slightly more than halfway home. And somehow, it's my memories of Breezewood that contextualize all my other memories of trips southeastward.
I've never been to Breezewood alone. The first three times I was there, I was with my ex and had no way of knowing when I would be there again or to what end. This last time I was with the neighbs, who had come down to Virginia to apartment-hunt with me, to look for a job, and to see if he could get his mind around being there with me indefinitely. As the two of us sat across from one another in a booth at the travel plaza, munching on overpriced submarine sandwiches and regarding one another with dazed highway eyes, it hit me: while Breezewood already figured disproportionately in my imagination, it was about to figure even more prominently as the place I pass through on my way back to Michigan for Christmases, Thanksgivings, graduations, weddings and funerals for years to come; my own, anonymous geographical and emotional way-station between the old life and the new one.
I wondered aloud to the neighbs what it must be like to live in Breezewood, to work at a franchise restaurant, to watch people come and go. It must feel a little like being suspended in midair, I guessed. You'd never really want to talk to anyone over long; you wouldn't want to get attached. All around you, people are on their way somewhere, and after a while their faces run together and they all seem the same: frowsy, grouchy and a bit detestable and self-important. I imagine you'd get defensive if you were from Breezewood and heard somebody like me running it down; you'd feel compelled to show that it isn't a non-place at all, that there's life and vibrance and direction. You'd try to make yourself believe that existence in this in-between had meaning and purpose, and you might even succeed, but you'd always ask yourself: where do they all come from, and where are they all going?
He has made up his mind to come with me. I think he has made up his own mind, and no one has forced him to it. I don't have to wonder what it's like to spend too long in Breezewood: it's Hell.
Not long ago, I had occasion to visit one non-place that, it occured to me while I was there, has figured relatively prominently in the last several years of my life: Breezewood, Pennsylvania. I say relatively prominently, because as a girl from the Midwest I seldom have reason to end up in Breezewood -- I don't even know anyone from Pennsylvania -- yet I realized that I've been there four times in the past decade, and that my joy in arriving there each time has been surpassed only by my joy of leaving. The reason I have visited Breezewood so many times is that it is almost exactly halfway between Kalamazoo, Michigan and Williamsburg, Virginia. It was only on my last trip through Breezewood that I began to reflect on exactly how often I have made this drive.
I am not the only one who stops in Breezewood. In fact, people flock to it. As near as I can tell, the entire town's identity coalesces around the fact that it is halfway between everything, and possesses the most diverse array of gas/food/lodging for miles in any direction. This non-town is full of non-places where travelers can fulfill basic needs at a staggering number of franchises. Or, if they prefer, they can dine on the traditional local cuisine, scrapple: après hot-dogs, a dispirited blob of gray non-meat served with eggs and choice of toast or grits. Here's the thing: although everything in Breezewood is characterized by that numbing mediocrity that makes me ill at ease wherever I encounter it, I am nonetheless grateful for the chance to empty my bladder, stretch my legs, fill my gas tank, rehydrate and choose from a greater variety of unwholesome road food options, knowing that I am either slightly less than halfway there or slightly more than halfway home. And somehow, it's my memories of Breezewood that contextualize all my other memories of trips southeastward.
I've never been to Breezewood alone. The first three times I was there, I was with my ex and had no way of knowing when I would be there again or to what end. This last time I was with the neighbs, who had come down to Virginia to apartment-hunt with me, to look for a job, and to see if he could get his mind around being there with me indefinitely. As the two of us sat across from one another in a booth at the travel plaza, munching on overpriced submarine sandwiches and regarding one another with dazed highway eyes, it hit me: while Breezewood already figured disproportionately in my imagination, it was about to figure even more prominently as the place I pass through on my way back to Michigan for Christmases, Thanksgivings, graduations, weddings and funerals for years to come; my own, anonymous geographical and emotional way-station between the old life and the new one.
I wondered aloud to the neighbs what it must be like to live in Breezewood, to work at a franchise restaurant, to watch people come and go. It must feel a little like being suspended in midair, I guessed. You'd never really want to talk to anyone over long; you wouldn't want to get attached. All around you, people are on their way somewhere, and after a while their faces run together and they all seem the same: frowsy, grouchy and a bit detestable and self-important. I imagine you'd get defensive if you were from Breezewood and heard somebody like me running it down; you'd feel compelled to show that it isn't a non-place at all, that there's life and vibrance and direction. You'd try to make yourself believe that existence in this in-between had meaning and purpose, and you might even succeed, but you'd always ask yourself: where do they all come from, and where are they all going?
He has made up his mind to come with me. I think he has made up his own mind, and no one has forced him to it. I don't have to wonder what it's like to spend too long in Breezewood: it's Hell.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
'cause everybody hates a tourist
So here's a tasty international news nugget for you, which I first heard about on - where else? npr - and which was later corroborated for me by my friend and fave keen cultural commentator, Raúl Argyr Tapia:
Apparently, in Querétaro, Mexico (where I lived for a short time on a couple of occasions), a group of emo kids was plaguing la Plaza de los Perritos (so named for the totally lovable fountain with puppies squirting water out of their mouths which graces the shady Plaza). First there were twenty or so of them congregating there on a regular basis. Their ranks slowly grew to fifty or so before some other counter-culture adolescents started the Movimiento Anti-Emo Querétaro. I believe I don't have to translate this for you, yes?
Via MSN Messenger, Facebook and Hi-5, Querétaro's punks, goths and stoners organized a bit of a rumble for this hipper-than-thou crowd. Never did they suspect that some 800 people between the ages of 14 and 17 would turn up to shove around los emos, but that's what reportedly happened. Now, it may seem like a low blow to beat up someone who would, by way of retaliation, most likely write a vengeful song about it, but here's the best part: they didn't bring guns, or knives or chains, or even use their fists. They just pulled hair and bitch-slapped los emos until they scattered like so many startled antelope in skinny jeans, their long, androgenous bangs obscuring their tears. Later, the unease spread from Querétaro to Mexico City, where events turned more violent.
Naturally, at this point, this tempest in a teacup attracted a good deal of media attention, which raised a question for many blissfully ignorant, mainstream Mexicans: what the hell is "emo"? Several emo kids were interviewed in the national media in an attempt to arrive at a conclusion about what, specifically, motivated these disenchanted youths. The latter insinuated that they were participating in a cultural movement of some kind, but not only were they unable to agree amongst themselves about what defined un emo, not one of them was able to offer a satisfactory explanation of what that cultural movement might consist of. So intriguing was this topic that the UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México) conducted a study in an attempt to determine what, if anything, it meant to be "emo". This study has tentatively concluded that "emo," in Mexico anyway, amounts to little more than a fashion trend and possesses no mores to speak of. Meanwhile, los emos protested and marched in diversity parades up and down La República.
Where to even begin with this? First off, I love that, in Querétaro anyway, teenagers had the good sense not to beat the crap out of those fifty (dis)affected kids. And I think it's fascinating that in this case the trend started in a provincial city and radiated to the Distrito Federal, which is kind of like something becoming all the rage in Wisconsin and having it take off with kids in Los Angeles.
The emo kids I met in Querétaro were, beyond a doubt, modder than mod. They had definitely perfected the look and assembled a credible dossier of obscure North American bands. But anyone from my country whom I might, in certain moments, have been tempted to designate as "emo" would eschew that classification absolutely and would certainly never, ever go on national television or march in a parade in order to justify his/her choice to dress like an extra from Revenge of the Nerds. Not that I have ever really checked, mind you, but last I checked, "emo" arose from the independent music scene, based on people just kind of going about their own business and expressing themselves, albeit at times a particularly whiny, mopy aspect of themselves. Not exactly a cohesive group, nor something you can particularly mobilize around except by putting out another 7-inch. Unless you're 14 years old and Mexican, in which case you wouldn't think of doing anything without 42 or so of your closest friends.
My sources have confirmed for me that there are no - count them, zero - Mexican emo bands. And I think that, deep down, what bothers Mexicans so much about los emos (while punkies, hard-cores, ravers and "darks" form a relatively peaceable kingdom) is that this is a hothouse flower of a trend that never could have sprung from Mexican soil. Mexicans aren't fundamentally outraged by being all alone in the universe. In fact, the nation's most famous cultural commentator, Octavio Paz, wrote that Mexicans inhabit a "Labyrinth of Solitude". Of course we're all alone in the universe, they seem to say. So what? That doesn't mean we have to act all alienated about it. In fact, it's precisely our shared solitude that makes us all the same. So the emo's angsty assertion of North American-style individuality, plus the North American music and androgenous, anti-macho looks -- all this backed by a lack of discernible ethos -- make them the consummate manifestation of all that is un-Mexican.
This whole thing is just the flipside of the whole U.S.-cultural-imperialism pizza token. This time it's gringo sub-culture being emulated. At first glance it may look anti-hegemonic, but there it is: it's gringophilia all over again.
Apparently, in Querétaro, Mexico (where I lived for a short time on a couple of occasions), a group of emo kids was plaguing la Plaza de los Perritos (so named for the totally lovable fountain with puppies squirting water out of their mouths which graces the shady Plaza). First there were twenty or so of them congregating there on a regular basis. Their ranks slowly grew to fifty or so before some other counter-culture adolescents started the Movimiento Anti-Emo Querétaro. I believe I don't have to translate this for you, yes?
Via MSN Messenger, Facebook and Hi-5, Querétaro's punks, goths and stoners organized a bit of a rumble for this hipper-than-thou crowd. Never did they suspect that some 800 people between the ages of 14 and 17 would turn up to shove around los emos, but that's what reportedly happened. Now, it may seem like a low blow to beat up someone who would, by way of retaliation, most likely write a vengeful song about it, but here's the best part: they didn't bring guns, or knives or chains, or even use their fists. They just pulled hair and bitch-slapped los emos until they scattered like so many startled antelope in skinny jeans, their long, androgenous bangs obscuring their tears. Later, the unease spread from Querétaro to Mexico City, where events turned more violent.
Naturally, at this point, this tempest in a teacup attracted a good deal of media attention, which raised a question for many blissfully ignorant, mainstream Mexicans: what the hell is "emo"? Several emo kids were interviewed in the national media in an attempt to arrive at a conclusion about what, specifically, motivated these disenchanted youths. The latter insinuated that they were participating in a cultural movement of some kind, but not only were they unable to agree amongst themselves about what defined un emo, not one of them was able to offer a satisfactory explanation of what that cultural movement might consist of. So intriguing was this topic that the UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México) conducted a study in an attempt to determine what, if anything, it meant to be "emo". This study has tentatively concluded that "emo," in Mexico anyway, amounts to little more than a fashion trend and possesses no mores to speak of. Meanwhile, los emos protested and marched in diversity parades up and down La República.
Where to even begin with this? First off, I love that, in Querétaro anyway, teenagers had the good sense not to beat the crap out of those fifty (dis)affected kids. And I think it's fascinating that in this case the trend started in a provincial city and radiated to the Distrito Federal, which is kind of like something becoming all the rage in Wisconsin and having it take off with kids in Los Angeles.
The emo kids I met in Querétaro were, beyond a doubt, modder than mod. They had definitely perfected the look and assembled a credible dossier of obscure North American bands. But anyone from my country whom I might, in certain moments, have been tempted to designate as "emo" would eschew that classification absolutely and would certainly never, ever go on national television or march in a parade in order to justify his/her choice to dress like an extra from Revenge of the Nerds. Not that I have ever really checked, mind you, but last I checked, "emo" arose from the independent music scene, based on people just kind of going about their own business and expressing themselves, albeit at times a particularly whiny, mopy aspect of themselves. Not exactly a cohesive group, nor something you can particularly mobilize around except by putting out another 7-inch. Unless you're 14 years old and Mexican, in which case you wouldn't think of doing anything without 42 or so of your closest friends.
My sources have confirmed for me that there are no - count them, zero - Mexican emo bands. And I think that, deep down, what bothers Mexicans so much about los emos (while punkies, hard-cores, ravers and "darks" form a relatively peaceable kingdom) is that this is a hothouse flower of a trend that never could have sprung from Mexican soil. Mexicans aren't fundamentally outraged by being all alone in the universe. In fact, the nation's most famous cultural commentator, Octavio Paz, wrote that Mexicans inhabit a "Labyrinth of Solitude". Of course we're all alone in the universe, they seem to say. So what? That doesn't mean we have to act all alienated about it. In fact, it's precisely our shared solitude that makes us all the same. So the emo's angsty assertion of North American-style individuality, plus the North American music and androgenous, anti-macho looks -- all this backed by a lack of discernible ethos -- make them the consummate manifestation of all that is un-Mexican.
This whole thing is just the flipside of the whole U.S.-cultural-imperialism pizza token. This time it's gringo sub-culture being emulated. At first glance it may look anti-hegemonic, but there it is: it's gringophilia all over again.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)