Nick Currie (aka Momus) has a very interesting series of posts on Click Opera recently about the state of being post-American. It was sort of a relief to read his well-articulated description of this situation, of being American but being over America at the same time, as I have been struggling with how to describe this in myself.
Nick quotes some neo-con Mark Krikorian in the National Review pejoratively describing the post-American as someone who "may actually still like America, but the emotion resembles the attachment one might feel to, say, suburban New Jersey." I'd make an amendment to that statement: it's not like the feeling one might have for suburban New Jersey, the situation is more akin to the feelings one might have for a retarded uncle. He's a schizoid semi-suicidal nincompoop but you have to see him at breakfast in the morning and deal with the insanity he shoves in your face. Ignoring him isn't an option because he's so loud and sort of dangerous, nor is dialog, which would require a level of intelligence that is just simply not present. So you cope. That's how I feel being back here, as though I am coping with America, my dear retarded uncle.
But at the same time, that is America in the generalized sense, and while totally accurate, it loses sight of the dots of beauty that are here. The local islands of relative sanity are very special as well. After returning from Berlin, it was such a pleasure to spend the afternoon with my friend Heather Heise bowing and scraping percussion instruments, making strange breathing sounds with her accordion, recording it all for a theater project she is working on as well as our own duo project. I have this amazing collection of sounds to play with now, and that's how I'm spending the rest of my day today. I love the community of people here in California who are wide-eyed and experimental and maverick in their thinking.
Or another example of what is great about this place, spending yesterday with Lee rummaging through the countless bins of music at Amoeba records, afterwards having very nice draft Belgian beers at Toronado in the lower Haight, where they seem to always be playing Rush's 2112 album. These are the things that make it OK, these are the kinds of people and places that exist here and possibly nowhere else that make this a magical place to be as well.
I think it takes a focus on the local to survive in America today. If one looks at the big picture, as any sane person should, it's a grim if not depressing sight. The future outlook for this country is not a good one, and the present is pretty awful as well. The general culture of the USA is caught in a downward spiral of greedy, bitter, insecure, childish, hedonistic, and ultimately suicidal paranoia. After three weeks in Berlin there's nothing I'd love more than to hop the next KLM flight and plant myself right back in Mitte, never to leave again, to be free from this place. But I can't, not yet anyway. What I can do is find those things that I love here in San Francisco, and join in with them and help them become even better, hoping somehow that it makes a difference. There is a lot to be said for leaving what you hate to find the place that speaks deeply to you, but sometimes sizing up the reality of the place where you are, and figuring out how you fit in and how you can improve it, while exhausting and frustrating, can be extremely rewarding as well in a very different sometimes surprising way.
