FundamentallySound Blog

It's always an interesting transition to notice, the feeling of moving from the wide–eyed perceptive observation of an outsider to the quiet disinterest of an insider. When first moving back to San Francisco last year I was entranced by the easy going lifestyle and sheer silliness of this city. I wanted to search out the unique qualities of the place, plug into its slapstick approach to life, dig into its role as a gay mecca and get a sense of the really pretty amazing electronic music coming from here. But now, a year later, I feel like I just live here. It's admittedly what I have wanted for some time now, to feel connected to a place and at ease with it, but it is still something of a startling sensation to realize that one just lives in a city, that you are no longer looking from the view of the observer but are just one of the people in the city noticed by tourists with their kids in tow.

After living a sort of internationally nomadic life for a few years, this change is very nice. I enjoy knowing that there is no time limit to my stay here, feeling completely fluent in the language, and understanding the cultural subtext. It's a challenge, especially these days, to say anything positive about America, but this city has a lot of good things going for it. It attracts all of the people who can't tolerate the way people live in the rest of the country, it's kind of a city for refugees from red–states without the cut–throat competitiveness of New York. In other words, it's civilized, relaxed, and has great weather.

I've been reading Momus' blog Click Opera regularly these days. I tend to agree with a lot of what he says, but sometimes his observations are a bit knee–jerk, in my opinion. And on the topic of dissing this country, Momus' vilification of Bush–era USA and joyful celebration of Clinton–era America is superficial. The differences between the two presidents are admittedly extremely important but, and he misses this point entirely, it is the same country that elected both. This leads to a complexity that Momus seems to ignore. After all, does the popularity of conservative De Villepin make France any less French?

Maybe the question comes down to this, when one says, "I really liked the USA during Clinton's presidency" what does it mean? Is it the media representation of the country they liked? Was it really a big nosed president who was a master of "self–mediation" (a poor kid from an impoverished town way down in the deep south turned political powerhouse) that marked the turning point for the world's affection? The truth of the matter is that it's essentially the same people who put Clinton into power that put Bush into power. How is this explained?

It seems to me that Bush is a reflection of the very dark imagination of this country, a personification of the subconscious demons of the culture. And of course a demon that lives and breathes and makes the front pages of the world's newspapers on a daily basis is a very easy target. Looking beyond Bush to America's cultural complexity with all the awful things as well as the pretty good things seems a lot more interesting than the obvious game of calling a devil a devil. Fearlessly exploring complexities is not the strong point of the media nor politics. But it is the job of artists.