Exit this Roman shell

[imomus]

For those of you thinking of leaving America today -- and there are many, I'm sure -- I'd say just do it. Walk away. Leaving Britain is the best thing I ever did. I lived for years there feeling like a political and cultural exile, trying to fight back with satire and a thousand subtle forms of stubbornness and resistance. But being an 'internal exile' is not good for the soul. My struggle with attitudes which seemed toxic to me started making me as hard, cynical and corrupt as the people and the attitudes I was fighting.

Soon I realised that British people were not going to change. At least not in my short lifetime. My contribution was never going to be accepted in that country. It was much easier to get up and go. You can change the world around you by simply getting on a plane and going to the place where they think like you, even if they don't speak the same language you speak. So I went to live in France. In Germany. In Japan. I became a world citizen.

I started to think in terms of cities, and even districts of cities, rather than nations. I made my own cut and paste environment, a place where I felt comfortable and valued. I selected its elements from the internet and the parts of the cities I loved and went to live in. I count the moment I left my incorrigible homeland as the moment my adult life really began. I am now a much happier and better adjusted person.

So just leave. America doesn't deserve you. Walk away. America doesn't need your talent, your creativity and your intelligence. Or rather, it needs them desperately, but it will never acknowledge that. It's too stupid to understand that. If it calls for you, it will call for you for the wrong reasons. It will call you up as a soldier. It will call for you as canon-fodder in some spurious and unnecessary war that serves the interests of 1% of its population and an even smaller percentage of the world's population. Even if it lets you live in relative peace as a mere civilian, it will force you to live in ways that destroy the world's weather systems and its environment. It will use your tax to fund pre-emptive wars of aggressive imperialism against impoverished nations with energy resources.

Leave while you still can. Leave as a civilian, not a soldier. Leave and lead the life you were born to lead. Your absence will hurt America economically, but it deserves that. And it doesn't deserve you.

Get a passport, get a visa. Work a job, save some money. Come to Europe, come to Japan. Life is more civilised here. Come as you are, come to work, come to play, come to stay. Make love to foreigners, not Americans. Make non-American babies. Make your children world citizens, as you make yourself one.

Then you know in your brain
Leave the capitol!
Exit this roman shell!
Then you know you must leave the capitol

Leave the capitol!
Exit this roman shell!

It will not drag me down
I will leave this ten times town
I will leave this fucking dump
One room, one room

(The Fall, 'Leave The Capitol')

Comments

[class-worrier.livejournal.com]

I started to think in terms of cities, and even districts of cities, rather than nations

I think a lot of us think in those terms. I'd seriously consider leaving Scotland (and maybe Britain) if it wasn't for some important ties.

One point though - that mind-think means that it's not necessary to leave America, surely?
Just move to one of the liberal-magnet cities.

[honeychurch.livejournal.com]

I live in a liberal state (New Jersey), twenty minutes outside *the* liberal-magnet city (New York), and an hour from another fairly liberal city (Philadelphia, trapped as it is in a swing state). The cities in this country who are threatened by terrorism in its real forms - New York, Washington DC - went overwhelmingly for Kerry, clearly not feeling safe. However, liberal-magnet cities are not the voice of the US - our voices are smothered, and we are dimissed as over-intellectual and unrealistic (I'm a graduate student working on my Ph.D. in English, so I'm generally dismissed by most of the American public). It doesn't matter how liberal your region is when the rest of the country dismisses you.

It's all well and good for people to say we should stay and fight, that four years isn't that long, that we should make our voices heard - but I heard that four years ago. I have been more politically active in the last four years than ever before in my life. I was among the million-plus men and women on the National Mall in April, demanding our rights to abortion, emergency contraception, reproductive services in general - and yet a man who has done more than any president to curb those rights is back in office. Bans on gay marriage passed in all eleven states where they were on the ballot - bans that also refuse recognition of civil unions and imperil the partner benefits of many gay and straight couples (so, now must you not only be heterosexual, but you may not live in sin). I'm lucky enough to live in none of those states, as well as living in a state with plenty of access to abortion and contraception; but I have trouble thinking of those in this country who do not have that access. As long as I am here, I can't bear it.

Of course, in that light, running away to another country is cowardly - but I am tired, and I am bitter. I have been shown that my voice does not matter, and I have been dismissed as a flaky intellectual with no moral values. I want there to be a mass exodus of we flaky, godless intellectuals, and that the country becomes completely fucked as a result. Or, even if it isn't, I just don't want to be a part of this circus anymore. Representative democracy is a lie - this country doesn't represent my voice at all.

I'm looking towards Canada - not only because it's the idealized Mecca of the American liberal, but because my chances of getting a job there are slightly better than in other countries (thanks to the MLA); of course, if everyone in my field leaves, that will make things more difficult....

[(Anonymous)]

word!

[johnnyshades.livejournal.com]

you're right. you're completely right.

[violentblue.livejournal.com]

thank you for this.

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

As the holder of an American passport who's lived in the UK since he was 4 years old, this whole disaster actually makes me want to move *back* to America. I tell you what, it's a horrible betrayal of one's gifts to hide out somewhere safe, making no difference, when there's places out there that really need good people fighting for them.

The problem, the threat to the world, isn't going to go away through intelligent people running away from it.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

If enough talented people leave the US, and if it keeps running up gigantic budget deficits by fighting wars, it will shrink to a manageable size. America is clearly on an identity quest. Let it become a red dwarf, shrunk down to its rural red states. Uninventive, intolerant, unproductive. That's its way of discovering 'who it really is'. Meanwhile, somewhere nicer, you can be discovering yours.

Why put your ingenuity at the service of 'a military monster chained to a political dwarf', as someone in the New York Review of Books puts it this month? Why generate tax revenue for a nation whose policies are not only disagreeable, but disastrous for the world, politically and ecologically?

[starofpersia.livejournal.com]

I understand what you're getting at, there are aspects of Japan I love dearly, it is at many times a living hell for me. It's a different place for different people, and apart from legal abortions and the lack of hate crimes, it's an absolute abyss for women and queers. Like the fact that a film depicting multiple rapes and battering women was shown at an all women's erotic film festival I attended last week. I think it's easy to miss a lot of the shitty aspects of Japan if you live on the surface and don't speak the language and don't have to work a full time job in a Japanese office or language school. A lot of the negative aspects are subtler, and conveyed through passive aggressive actions, ie, you can go ahead and ask for that day off but please remember that it will cause all your coworkers to resent you for your selfish behavior.

Bush winning is gutting me, because for me, San Francisco IS HOME, it is the place where I feel comfortable, loved and understood. And the fact that the people of San Francisco are militantly opposed to Bush, it doesnt change the fact he rules America, and can impinge on our civil rights.

So what happens when the place I need to be is being held hostage by the Bush regime? It feels like a rock and a hard place.

[malo23.livejournal.com]

I just wanted to jump in here and say that I agree with you 100%. Japan can indeed be a living hell at times, and it has more problems--social, economical, political--than most people are willing to admit (see this book (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0809039435/qid=1099486963/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/104-6302097-4616737?v=glance&s=books&n=507846) if you need further convincing). At the same time, and speaking as an American citizen, I, like many others, feel betrayed--wounded, even. I just don't understand how the American people (if it is in fact the American people who will *really* decide the outcome of this election) could vote for another four years of Bush, Jr. I mean, it boggles the mind. He lies, he cheats, he sneers at the camera...it's a nightmare, truly a nightmare. I don't know whether I'd want to go back to the U.S. at this point, if indeed Bush ends up re-ascending his throne, yet staying in Japan forever (and ever) certainly isn't a very appealing idea either (and, just for the record, I'm married to a Japanese woman and speak the language). Sometimes it seems as if there is *nowhere* left to go. A rock and a hard place, indeed. I'm feeling the crunch.

~m

[(Anonymous)]

Aaaargh .. I am disgusted by this election result .. as an American overseas, all I can say is I'm so glad to be here (in Prague) .. I left after Bush stole the first election ... why Americans like being misused and shat on by their government is beyond me ... plain ignorance.

My response now: Never go back there to live. I will pick mushrooms in the Sumava forest, make soup, take trains, paint, love the landscape .. and not tie my future to a gutted plain of walmartification and antigay fundamentalism.

Then again Tesco is making inroads here fast ...

Please bring on global depression .. I want to live in the 19th Century in the 21st Century

Lawrence Wells
http://www.volny.cz/bikerbar (http://www.volny.cz/bikerbar)

[(Anonymous)]

It's naive to think that people can just up and leave. What's most important for most people is not whether their govt is mildly right-wing or very right-wing (as the choice was in the US) but their network of family, friends, social structures/relations etc., which even in this day and age tend to be overwhelmingly geographically based. Despite your praise for the tightly strutured social models in Japan, Nick, you yourself are something of an "electron libre" as the French say, and are probably more suited to a wandering, ad hoc modus operandi. There are some things to be gained from the "cut & paste" lifestyle, but also a certain depth that is lost. You live in Berlin, and you like the social democratic model of German govt, and yet you're really only floating on the surface of the social polis there. You spend a good part of your time on the Net where you converse with mainly Anglo-Saxon people and read the Anglo-Saxon media, your friends and acquaintances mostly aren't German or Berliners, you haven't bothered to learn the language so there are crucial ways in which you can't participate in the life of the city, you're not really much interested in the German culture of today, and when you do go out wandering, you search out familiarity in the same hipster/ethnic areas you'd go to in any city in the world... in short, you're not really living in Berlin, because you could be in any number of big cities, including American ones, leading exactly the same sort of life. If all this sounds like a criticism, it isn't really because it fits my own profile pretty well too. But it's a lifestyle that is not suited to everyone, and is, as I said above, one with its losses as well as its gains.

[(Anonymous)]

dear momus,

thanks so much for this post. its so encouraging, and echoes the exact sentiment that i have come to develop in the last year or two. there is so much creative energy, so many genuine, inventive, and intellectual people in america. seriously SO many. if i hadn't started to find some of them by my late teenage years, i could have been dead by now.

but that nation is not ours. it will be far more effective to let the US implode in its own grossly bloated romance with bigness, self-importance, and so-called 'moral-values' by deserting it, than by trying to change shit. im sure it won't come in our lifetimes, but someday there will be a world without nations. as it is, the citizens of every other country deserve to elect the american president more than we do. bush, kerry? what difference does it make for those living within our borders? either way we'll go on living in ultra comfort, guzzling gasoline as the price rises to ten dollars a gallon and beyond.

for my part i am going to act like said nation-free world is already here now. and i would encourage anyone with similar feelings to just up and get the fuck out. there are a lot of us, and if we all leave, all the artists, writers, intellectuals, scientists, and just good people in general, america will suffocate, and the condition of the world as a whole will get a whole lot better. so please, if you ever had the first thought about it, do it. if we all leave now, we'll even be able to see a strong imact in our lifetimes.

-shane

a californian writing from tokyo

[everybabyweeps.livejournal.com]

im going to knit a hat with that design on it, if you don't mind.

and i'm leaving.

Re: From the Independent Group to Robot Rockism

[(Anonymous)]

Considered lightly over rumours
Of cotton bud economics, heard amiss
Through reeking ear horns of cankered magic,
Or jigged sparklingly
At the wrong time, this worst time:
Words seep into oubliettes
As colours pulse from a billion throats
Of the referred,
Whose tongues drip prayer and rage,
Other souls,
Stricken and trickle bowelled,
Imponderable
In the immensity of their being.
And still,
Fucking still,
Blood mops,
Fools,
You theorise.

Re: From the Independent Group to Robot Rockism

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry,

For 'Whose tongues drip prayer and rage', read 'Whose deep tongues drip prayer and rage.'

Thanks,
Ben

I'm not a religious man, but...

[gillen.livejournal.com]

"And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies. And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, My people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues." (Revelation 18:2-4)

Re: I'm not a religious man, but...

[(Anonymous)]

Good quote, although I question whether Nick Currie's voice is either strong or indeed originating in an abode of atemporal splendour and the highest good. For anyone interested in meaningful discourse, as opposed to poppycock and piffle, I warmly suggest Mary Midgely's 'The Myths We Live By'.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm disgusted and depressed by this election result, but the answer is not to leave but to stay and fight. Four years is a long time but not forever. We need to contest the power at its heart. The liberal half of the country needs to stay put and make its voice heard.

[plastickitty.livejournal.com]

Thank you Momus

Is changing your country like changing your LJ icon?

[xv.livejournal.com]

Half of this country voted democrat. That's impressive, especially considering that the Bush people breed a heckuvah lot more than I do. Personally, I don't want to see my country waste away. As internet users, we are already global citizens. I used to think that the internet would accelerate population movement/clustering among brainy types like us. Now I'm not so convinced, merely by observing myself. Not only have I stayed put in the precinct I was born, but the house. The internet satisfies my wanderlust. This virtual community is where I am comfortable.

Re: Is changing your country like changing your LJ icon?

[sneerpout.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[sneerpout.livejournal.com]

I agree with you, and am currently hosting a discussion as to which country I should settle in next. But if even a small proportion of the bright, talented, caring individuals in America were to turn their backs on their country in the light of this setback, there would be fewer forward-looking and sensitive people left to fight another day.

[xbrokenx.livejournal.com]

that is beautiful.
best thing ive read all week.

Hope instead of fear

[klasensjo.livejournal.com]

I wish my backpack was as light as yours. Your message is one of hope instead of fear. The election was the opposite. In a moment like this I truly appreciate your journal. Feels a little better.

Invitation to a beheading

[xyzedd.livejournal.com]

One of the worst things about the election results is we'll likely not see Momus on these shores for a long time. (Oh, come on, I know that's trivial compared to the enormity of the changes we'll undergo over the next four years--or eight--or a lifetime. But it still winces.)

Last night I went to bed feeling an enormous guillotine blade was poised above my head, and placed my head on the pillow as if on the lunette, still somehow hoping I would wake safe and whole from this nightmare. Today I feel my head is in the basket. I've never felt worse in my life.

So many of us don't have the means to leave America--and why should the rest of the world want us, anyway?

I guess I'm going to have to, in effect, stop worrying and learn to love the bomb. Shop at Wal-Mart. Listen to country radio. Follow Fox News's advice. Pollute all I like. Worship the president. Lower my IQ. Oh, and yes, burn all my Momus CDs.

Re: Invitation to a beheading

[starofpersia.livejournal.com]

So many of us don't have the means to leave America--and why should the rest of the world want us, anyway?

Not with the current economic situation, at any rate. The friend I know who is seriously planning on repatriating makes $100,000 a year, which makes things easier. He's also ending a 10 year relationship, since his partner wants to stay.

And no, you don't have to do those things to stay.

[die-tomate.livejournal.com]

My husband and I have decided that we will not raise our child here. I agree with you 110%! We have network of friends in Berlin, so that is where we will be going. Hopefully soon.

hear hear

[(Anonymous)]

I've spoken to aging hippies about the culture wars of the 60's, and none of them can remember ever feeling this dissociated from the rest of the country--this is a new phenomenon. Sorry to take up space with this, but this has been an important poem for me in time of crisis and I think germane to the discussion today--a gay exile stuck between two continents in time of war...it could have been written this morning.

September 1, 1939
W. H. Auden

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
"I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,"
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

Re: hear hear

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this poem, whoever you are.

[zacharydaiquiri.livejournal.com]

Well put, Nick.
It really does make one think what kind of country would elect someone that, well, quarter-witted. I love aspects of the United States, and I have several friends who live there... I just can not fathom such stupidity in an election.

Once again, why I'm proud to be Canadian.

Zachary Pascal

[pinkfoils.livejournal.com]

This entry just spoke every thought I've ever tried to ignore about why I should leave/should have planned to leave a long time ago. It seems like the state of things should make us all pull together and fight it, but I feel like something much bigger than that needs to show America what a failing nation it has become.

I've always thought I could stay here and be a 'world citizen.' I could take my French, Italian and German classes, speak Spanish in the home, next semester learn some Japanese. Stay up to date with the culture in the world. But exactly as you said, I feel like my soul is being killed off by trying to accept the surrounding environment.

I just wish the streets would flood, with all of us who do not want this man to represent us in the world, and we could scream and cry and console ourselves, on all the biggest boulevards in Los Angeles, NYC, anywhere. And maybe the world will know some of us don't drive SUVs, don't support our taxes going to a war we never wanted, and that some of us support art, education, culture, peace, and progress. Maybe they'll welcome us as one of their own.

[talentshow.livejournal.com]

It is easy to say, just leave. The reality is so much harder. What do you do when you've been victimized by the economy and never made a living wage? What do you do when the place you made poverty level wages while you were working your way through college severely injures you and Bush's tort reforms keep you from taking that employer to court for compensation for stealing your health? That's happened to me. I have no ability to save money, and no reasonable hope of getting out of this country any time for years to come, if ever.

It is easy to say leave, but leaving is out of the grasp of those of us who most need to.

[(Anonymous)]

Word. I'll be able to live my ideals...*after* I pay the student loans. $60,000.

[inparticolare.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this.

[(Anonymous)]

Where does the need to live a country come from when one thinks in city or city's portions terms?