Local man isn't
Sep. 27th, 2006 06:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusYesterday's complaint about cell phones was, to some extent, a complaint about the whole idea of being local. I confessed that I'd gotten my life somewhat out of kilter, skewed everything towards the global. This raises an interesting question: is it possible to be a "failed local"? If I were to appear in The Onion, would the article be headlined Local Man Isn't?
What is a "failed local"? Well, it might be someone who never talks to his neighbours, someone who doesn't really have local ties. A man who has no job in the area he lives in, no child to pick up from school. A man who prefers to live with other "failed locals" or poor cosmopolitans like himself -- Turks and Japanese, perhaps. A man with a laptop constantly connected to the internet, but no cell phone. A man who travels, but doesn't vote.
The archetype is familiar from literature. Our fellow is the man in the spooky children's poem:
As I was walking up the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
I wish, I wish, he'd go away.
Or he's a scholar from the Academy of Lagado in Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels". The professors of the flying island of Laputa walk around wrapped so deep in cloudy theories that attendants have to flap an inflated bladder into their faces periodically, rousing them to pay salutary, cursory attention to their surroundings.
Eating is the main thing that connects such a man to the city he lives in. Yesterday, ignoring the community centre next door, I made my way for lunch to Smart Deli, a Japanese cafe where I can read the latest issue of fashion magazine Fudge and watch tapes of Japanese TV while scoffing down salmon teriyaki. I like watching the TV there because it's "international TV". And yet if I'm in Japan exactly the same TV feels "domestic", and I avoid it. (What's more, you really only get teriyaki sauce on salmon outside of Japan. It's "export cuisine".)
Cycling home, our Laputan began to question how unusual his sense of removal really is. After all, he lives in a city with a peculiar history. West Berlin, once upon a time, was the "city that refused to be local". Located in East Germany, it nevertheless proclaimed an affinity with a different state far away to the West. Now the areas of the city our detached hero visits are as detached as he is; divided between a transient population of young creatives from all over the world, and "guest workers" from Turkey.
But it isn't just immigrants he feels affinity with. It's lodgers, people who rent rather than buying, people who stay foreign. But also, it's attractive women walking alone on the street. They too seem detached from the local, unwilling to meet a stranger's eye. It's not safe.
"Be here now", rockist hippies used to say. Reality was "the street". (There's some of this argument in my piece about cell phones: why aren't people on the bus actually talking to other people physically there on the bus with them?) "If you don't make eye contact walking on the street, you're one of them and you are safe, sleeping down the street," The Slits used to sing. But in another song Ari Up complained about the fellow on the underground train who "thinks if he asks you might". You don't necessarily want to be here, now with just anyone. Sometimes a lady needs some disconnect.
What's more, as Gertrude Stein famously observed of Oakland, sometimes "there's no there there". There are whole neighbourhoods (suburbs in particular) which are "utopian" in the sense that they are built to be "no places", to be "elsewheres". To live in them fully would be to let an emptiness rush into one's soul and define it. No offense to Oakland, but we wouldn't want that.
Instead of letting the banalities (or dangers, or eccentricities, or irrelevancies) of the street fill one's soul, perhaps the best relationship one can have with the local is to take it somewhere else, lift it away from itself by means of travellers' tales, real or invented. That's what I plan to do tonight at Schokoladen, Ackerstrasse 169, when I play a "rare hometown concert". Local Berlin listings magazine Zitty selects the gig as one of the most interesting things happening in the city tonight, commenting:
"This is the tale of an unsung folk hero. The Song of the Scot Momus, who plied his Electronic Folk Music for more than 20 albums on cult labels like 4AD, Creation and Cherry Red. These works not being to everyone's taste, the man was obliged to write pop hits for Japanese singers in order to pay for his life in Berlin. But that can also be completely merry."
It can indeed. If the local fails you, there's always the global. Come fly with me tonight!
What is a "failed local"? Well, it might be someone who never talks to his neighbours, someone who doesn't really have local ties. A man who has no job in the area he lives in, no child to pick up from school. A man who prefers to live with other "failed locals" or poor cosmopolitans like himself -- Turks and Japanese, perhaps. A man with a laptop constantly connected to the internet, but no cell phone. A man who travels, but doesn't vote.
The archetype is familiar from literature. Our fellow is the man in the spooky children's poem:
As I was walking up the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
I wish, I wish, he'd go away.
Or he's a scholar from the Academy of Lagado in Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels". The professors of the flying island of Laputa walk around wrapped so deep in cloudy theories that attendants have to flap an inflated bladder into their faces periodically, rousing them to pay salutary, cursory attention to their surroundings.
Eating is the main thing that connects such a man to the city he lives in. Yesterday, ignoring the community centre next door, I made my way for lunch to Smart Deli, a Japanese cafe where I can read the latest issue of fashion magazine Fudge and watch tapes of Japanese TV while scoffing down salmon teriyaki. I like watching the TV there because it's "international TV". And yet if I'm in Japan exactly the same TV feels "domestic", and I avoid it. (What's more, you really only get teriyaki sauce on salmon outside of Japan. It's "export cuisine".)
Cycling home, our Laputan began to question how unusual his sense of removal really is. After all, he lives in a city with a peculiar history. West Berlin, once upon a time, was the "city that refused to be local". Located in East Germany, it nevertheless proclaimed an affinity with a different state far away to the West. Now the areas of the city our detached hero visits are as detached as he is; divided between a transient population of young creatives from all over the world, and "guest workers" from Turkey.
But it isn't just immigrants he feels affinity with. It's lodgers, people who rent rather than buying, people who stay foreign. But also, it's attractive women walking alone on the street. They too seem detached from the local, unwilling to meet a stranger's eye. It's not safe.
"Be here now", rockist hippies used to say. Reality was "the street". (There's some of this argument in my piece about cell phones: why aren't people on the bus actually talking to other people physically there on the bus with them?) "If you don't make eye contact walking on the street, you're one of them and you are safe, sleeping down the street," The Slits used to sing. But in another song Ari Up complained about the fellow on the underground train who "thinks if he asks you might". You don't necessarily want to be here, now with just anyone. Sometimes a lady needs some disconnect.
What's more, as Gertrude Stein famously observed of Oakland, sometimes "there's no there there". There are whole neighbourhoods (suburbs in particular) which are "utopian" in the sense that they are built to be "no places", to be "elsewheres". To live in them fully would be to let an emptiness rush into one's soul and define it. No offense to Oakland, but we wouldn't want that.
Instead of letting the banalities (or dangers, or eccentricities, or irrelevancies) of the street fill one's soul, perhaps the best relationship one can have with the local is to take it somewhere else, lift it away from itself by means of travellers' tales, real or invented. That's what I plan to do tonight at Schokoladen, Ackerstrasse 169, when I play a "rare hometown concert". Local Berlin listings magazine Zitty selects the gig as one of the most interesting things happening in the city tonight, commenting:"This is the tale of an unsung folk hero. The Song of the Scot Momus, who plied his Electronic Folk Music for more than 20 albums on cult labels like 4AD, Creation and Cherry Red. These works not being to everyone's taste, the man was obliged to write pop hits for Japanese singers in order to pay for his life in Berlin. But that can also be completely merry."
It can indeed. If the local fails you, there's always the global. Come fly with me tonight!
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-27 05:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-27 06:24 am (UTC)I felt much the same way in New York, though: a place built for people like me (neurotic, bookish, stuttery) and a place to which I plan to return in a few years. I think it all comes down to your desire to feel foreign. Maybe that's just how us writers/musicians operate: on the fringes of any given locale, always looking in. I prefer it, personally.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-27 06:26 am (UTC)There are benefits to never completely belonging, yes. It really opens the eyes up to different perspectives and ideas, and the differences become less "wrong" and more just "not the way I do it" and sometimes it changes. But sometimes I wish for relationships with more permanance, for being able to really know someone quite well.
I am also someone who really likes the internet, but not cell phones. I finally do have a cell phone, but it doesn't really get any use. My computer on the other hand...
Berlin is special that way
Date: 2006-09-27 06:59 am (UTC)Berlin has none of that and its refreshing disconnectedness deserves a hometown concert, I'd say. See you tonight..... if I can get in, now that you're Tagestipp.
morr pop music
Date: 2006-09-27 08:18 am (UTC)A few related phenomena
Date: 2006-09-27 08:31 am (UTC)And further down on the socioeconomic ladder, there were warnings that in this day of global communications, immigrants aren't assimilating but instead are remaining in cultural bubbles linked to back home; rather than having to forge new social structures and adopt some of the local ways, they can rely on long-distance social networks, living parallel lives oblivious to any local culture other than the bare necessities (such as how to work or pay for a Tube ticket). They weren't talking about scary enclaves of radicalised Muslims this time but about the numerous Poles and such.
Re: A few related phenomena
Date: 2006-09-27 08:37 am (UTC)Re: A few related phenomena
Date: 2006-09-27 10:45 am (UTC)ganz
Date: 2006-09-27 09:43 am (UTC)So if you say, in a forthright, gung-ho way, with your head held high and chest puffed out, "It can be Quite Merry!" you mean it's the merriest thing ever. You could even go as far as saying "It can be quite, QUITE merry!" which is merrier still. Quite here means completely, undeniably.
On the other hand, if you say, rather hesitantly, with a bit of a dubious look on your face, "Well, it can be quite merry," the word quite suddenly loses its impact and sounds very half-hearted, meaning almost the complete opposite.
'Ganz' also means complete, but if a German says 'ganz lustig' with one of those peculiarly German pursed-lip-faces whilst shrugging their shoulders non-commitally, then 'ganz' just means 'sort of'.
You have done well to render the last sentence of that listing with such joie-de-vivre!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-27 09:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-27 10:01 am (UTC)But yes, I don't have a job here. And I've lived in Berlin three years. I like it a lot here, but I choose to live a "diasporan" life here, and I support the right of all immigrants to do that. That includes not learning the language if they don't want to, not eating the local cuisine, and so on. Cities are enriched by difference. Berlin, above all, should know this. Nobody wants to go back to 1933.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-27 10:19 am (UTC)Learning the language, interesting oneself in the culture and mixing with the locals is hardly the slippery slope to Nazi hell. It's part of negotiating with the community that surrounds you, and takes nothing away from one's cultural identity. I'm glad to hear you speak some German after all.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-27 10:34 am (UTC)And while it may not be Nazi, this idea of obligatory negotiation with the culture around you does smack of right wing attitudes, and it's becoming increasingly common in countries like France and Britain for immigrants to be obliged to swear oaths of allegiance, have tests of knowledge of the host country, learn the language and so on. I'm very much against this. For me, integration is fine if it means something like the Turkish market near my house being accepted as a Berlin attraction. It's not fine if it means people putting pressure on the Turkish market to become more German. And actually that wouldn't be integration at all, but assimilation.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-27 10:56 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-27 11:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-27 05:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-28 10:24 am (UTC)Its practically sexual.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-27 09:47 am (UTC)I would have assumed..
Date: 2006-09-27 10:06 am (UTC)A choice of schools, better education for everyone and the joy of working for a community which we could actually purchase homes in, if we want to, and a not so overpriced rate of rent for those who don't want to buy their homes.. these are possibly the things that I as a non-failed local will hope to work towards, even if it go against the grain and annoy people being the squeeky wheel, the reminder there is much to be done for everyone to enjoy life. We in Sweden have a wonderful standerd of living, it should be able to be shared by everyone.. not just Swedes born here or "white people".. Everyone.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-27 01:01 pm (UTC)Robbo
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-27 01:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-27 01:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-27 01:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-27 04:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-27 01:26 pm (UTC)Still, it is rare that I pass a week there without someone asking me where I am from, since I do not have an Arkansas accent. Nor did I got to school with them- being a military brat (and veteran) means that I had to be a 'failed local' in many places, and it's possible that I will never be fully rooted no matter how hard I try.
Always the stranger, never the native- that is my lot.
More German press
Date: 2006-09-27 01:45 pm (UTC)Meanwhile, for The Berlin Paper (http://www.theberlinpaper.com/home/music/37017.html), "Scottish Nipponophile sings".
People love the exotic. Bringing the devil into a rant against a phone gives it so much more drama, just as a concert in Berlin sounds more interesting when Japan and Scotland loom mysteriously through the cigarette smoke.
phonephobia
Date: 2006-09-27 05:47 pm (UTC)Another case where Ted Hughes was ahead of the game:
before the soft words with their spores, the cosmetic
breath...
it drags its worshippers into actual graves
with a variety of devices
through a variety of disguised voices
... sit godless when you hear the religious wail of the telephone
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-27 01:45 pm (UTC)My family's made up of ex-pats, etc. ... one, an American family in Hong Kong. The other ex-pat communities were mostly English and Irish ... they each had their own little communities which were hard to mingle with. if anything, it seems like the ex-pat experience is say, having a micro-reproduced England in Asia, rather than anything you know ... on a ----higher level----.
If you're an alienated weirdo who drifts around anyway, I think that's a special case worth something more than the whole miserable "ex-pat" thing.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-27 01:48 pm (UTC)I don't think much of anything passes that test. Will my scream of "We'rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre all dooooooooooooooooooomed!" matter when our planet is swalled whole by the sun? Not one jot or tittle.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-27 03:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-27 04:31 pm (UTC)(Off to sound check.)
slaughter & may, hem hem
Date: 2006-09-27 05:43 pm (UTC)A "failed local" is eliminated by the people who keep the Local Shop
(_League of Gentlemen_ reference... I couldn't cite Royston Vasey
because I know what the town was called originally. Much ruder.)
http://www.leagueofgentlemen.co.uk/hadfield1.shtml
Re: slaughter & may, hem hem
Date: 2006-09-27 09:41 pm (UTC)i love that show.
Re: slaughter & may, hem hem
Date: 2006-09-28 05:22 am (UTC)The Big Here
Date: 2006-09-27 06:03 pm (UTC)http://www.kk.org/helpwanted/archives/001084.php
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-27 06:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-27 11:33 pm (UTC)In the places I've lived since moving away from home, the newcomer/foreigner distinction developed a specific meaning for me. Locals born and raised in an area are often welcoming and resourceful but naive hosts, who can't relate to the complex challenges of being a visitor or newcomer. Often I've clashed with them in this regard, when my basic needs exceed their field of vision. And they often strike me as more immature and insensitive than people living far from home. To the point where I'm wary of getting too involved with anyone who has lived in the same place all their life, even as I admire them for staying local.
Also, in this day and age, you can't assume locals are always more socially integrated. There are families of loners and outsiders who stay in the same place their whole life, and globetrotters who very "local" if not lasting ties.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-28 02:02 am (UTC)Can you have Freedom as an Individual when you have to be in the Fraternity of the National?
Will there be International Individual Equality? (Man equals man - http://imomus.livejournal.com/2006/07/22/)
What will happen when the Local and the International collapses into simultaneity? What will you watch on television then?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-28 12:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-28 12:24 pm (UTC)No there where?
Date: 2006-09-28 06:47 pm (UTC)<< There are whole neighbourhoods (suburbs in particular) which are "utopian" in the sense that they are built to be "no places", to be "elsewheres". >>
I don't think Stein was saying this of Oakland, and I also don't think it's true of Oakland. I grew up in suburbs in Louisville, KY, and know a suburb when I see one, and Oakland doesn't have them.
Now Berkeley, with its rarefied academic neighborhoods and carefully-manicured lawns, arguably has some more isolated areas, but Oakland neighborhoods are pretty well integrated by west coast standards.
(sorry to get all defensive about my home town but Oakland doesn't deserve disrespect! and Stein was a bitter old narcissist!)
nowhere man
Date: 2006-09-29 05:15 pm (UTC)for something completely different though i'd wonder what you think about those things that rock the world of management right now - like in this article http://www.fastcompany.com/subscr/109/open_design-tough-love.html
maybe you can relate to that.
if not it does really not matter at all.
just a try.
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/NussbaumOnDesign/archives/2006/09/a_story_you_nee.html?campaign_id=rss_blog_nussbaumondesign
http://metacool.typepad.com/metacool/2006/09/attention_manda.html
(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-03 09:00 am (UTC)ETHNOMAGNETISM: The tendency of young people to live in emotionally demonstrative, more unrestrained ethnic neighborhoods: "You wouldn't understand it there, mother— they hug where I live now."