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

bah election.

[brandileigh.livejournal.com]

Working on it as we speak.
Cancelling next trip to Tokyo in January in favor of saving up money to move faster.
Looking at New Zealand seeing as how I can get a degree faster, cheap living conditions and less visa restrictions for moving to just about anywhere in the world.

Re: bah election.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Govett-Brewster art gallery in New Plymouth, NZ is currently seeking a new curator. Details at www.edu-news.com.

[getpeached.livejournal.com]

I wrote an angry, pissed off post in my live journal, but I think you put things much more succinctly. Thank you and I am definitely going to take you up on the suggestions to get out of here.

This is not my America.

[xchimx.livejournal.com]

i come from montana, a pretty conservative state. most of my coworkers openly supported bush - but they did so because the rural united states fears liberal bureaucracy invading their live. they feared kerry taking away their gun rights. they feared losing community and state autonomy. Maybe it is shortsighted to think in such a manner, but to a degree i can understand it and respect it.

[astro-astro.livejournal.com]

(but do you vote?)

no, not a good time to leave at all.

[qualities.livejournal.com]

no. an even half of america voted to change things. if you factor in the disenfranchized who dont vote, then it becomes clear that this country is not a lost cause.

america is not failing because its a bad place, this country is failing because there is a thin - a thin - mesh of poor management at the highest levels; a faltering system of antiquated rules and laws and customs that makes it very difficult for change to happen. and i think that there is a lot of hope in a place where half of the people want things to stay like they were 100 years ago, but where the other half desparately want progress. progress will come about. change will take place. nothing stays the same forever.

if the task at hand is to convince a huge majority to see things the way i do, then yes, all is pretty much lost. but thats not the task at all. the task is to bring about a change, to alter that mesh thats up over all of our heads; things like the electoral college, a lack of instant runoff voting - the power systems, in short, that make it possible for a polarized, evenly divided country to adopt the visage of a monolithic, conservative state.

all is not lost. think about what this country acted like 5o years ago, and think about how much of a struggle the government has to put up to even pay lip service to that tradition. all is not lost. we're closer than we've ever been, in fact. overcoming the traditions of several barbaric centuries isnt something that happens in a year or two.

The world doesn't end in a wimper...it ends with a series of loud bangs.

[tomwalker.livejournal.com]

I've never been able to walk away from a bad thing. I'm a fixer...I have to try to fix it.

This country is gonna' go up in flames, and I'm gonna' be here when it happens. I was kinda' hoping for some light rioting today...I had my brick ready and everything. Maybe in four years....when Arnold runs.

Although I have always wanted to go to Armenia. Maybe now is my chance.

Dobler.

[sylvia101.livejournal.com]

thank you momus, i appreciate this encouragement. and i'll be taking a look at housing and jobs in vancouver and toronto starting today.

but i am in chicago now, and i love it. illinois just elected an inspiring new senator, and i am surrounded by comfortable progressive thinking. if only all of chicago could leave the united states.

as my husband said, the american civil war should have ended differently. even if texas left the union we would be in much better shape.

chicago is an island

[kismetcrash.livejournal.com]

sylvia: i had the same thought about Obama.
i work at the Tribune and spent most of last night in the newsroom with everyone else. despite being a Republican paper, we're a strongly liberal bunch. a few old white men were completely for bush, of course. that's to be expected. but when it was annoucned that Obama had taken it, even they sighed and remarked, "Thank god."

[scottbateman.livejournal.com]

I'm getting a passport next week. Thank you for this post.

[jake82.livejournal.com]

I'm a Canadian citizen who has lived in the United States all my life, and I have every intention of staying here. Change is only going to happen from the inside out-- how long is it going to take, if all the intellegent liberals leave as you suggest, before the country implodes? Four years? Eight? Or will this neo-con paradise just go on indefinitely, bringing the rest of the world down with it? Running away isn't going to solve anything-- the issue still exists even if we aren't living in it.

Believe me, I know what you're talking about when you speak of he toxicity of being exiled in your own land, but doing the expatriate thing won't do much more than make ourselves feel better. I think the bigger issue is the pessimism of American liberals... all along this year, people have been saying "vote Kerry!" but muttering under their breaths about how they know he won't win. However you feel about him, I think Michael Moore put it well (http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?messageDate=2004-09-20) in a message from a few months back addressing the issue. For the past week, all I've been getting from my liberal friends is "Bush is going to win. No, you're so wrong-- I'm certain he'll win!" and with every new red state appearing on the electoral map, "see, Kerry has no chance! He's already lost." Regardless of the 150 electoral votes that were still up for grabs, everyone was already proclaiming that Bush was going to win by a landslide. Well, it turns out he didn't. In electoral terms, he won by less than a million votes.

Such a paltry victory should do the opposite of triggering all of our hope (intellegent liberals like the people who read this, I assume) running for the hills. We need to stay and fix things here, because if we don't no one else is going to... waiting for everything to collapse is not a viable solution-- we may as well be supporting them. We've turned ourselves into a self-fulfilling prophecy: Kerry is going to lose, so why even bother?

Why? Because if maybe 200,000 people had bothered we wouldn't be dealing with four more years of the most disastrous presidency in our history and probably widespread irrevocable damage to society, the environment, foreign relations, blah fuckin blah.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I'm a Canadian citizen who has lived in the United States all my life, and I have every intention of staying here. Change is only going to happen from the inside out-- how long is it going to take, if all the intellegent liberals leave as you suggest, before the country implodes? Four years? Eight?

But surely, by the logic of your own argument, you should be working within Canada to change it from the inside? Your example is like me saying 'I went to Japan and worked on changing their society instead of my own. I wasn't a quitter.' You did quit your native land, you just didn't quit politics. Which is fine, and exactly what I'm arguing. You can do art and politics wherever you are. You don't need to bind yourself to a bunch of suspicious farmers in Nebraska. Why should they define all your dialectics?

[autokrater.livejournal.com]

MOMUS, I LOVE YOU
that post made me almost burst into tears.
you understand exactly what i have been thinking for many years!
you know how bad i want to leave here? i don't think you do...
nobody understands or appreciates anything that i like here..
i want to move to japan next fall but it is so expensive!!
i am very depressed about this and have been saving all my paychecks, it is my dream to go to japan and i know that i would be very happy there.
i think the reason i am not so distraught over the election is cause i don't want to change america, it's two party system,obese families with SUV's,michael jackson,mcdonald's,i totally exist outside these things and live in the world..
i know what art/music/fashion is going on right now in japan and i want to be apart of it. i am in a place where people throw on the clothes their parents pick out for them and art is not appreciated unless it's watercolor paintings of lighthouses.
but i escape through thinking on a global level,because in my mind i am going to japan no matter what the cost..and not even thinking about the u.s, i am not attached to it at all.

The Rockists have won.

[(Anonymous)]

Nice choice of song quotation. However I think MES is probably a Bush supporter. As I write, Kerry has just conceded.

I am not sure how my wife and I are going to get through the next 4 years. I have been in the US for just over 4 years now and have only just began to get established. I wish I could just run away ( a tendency I have had in the past). We will have to see how we feel in days to come. All I can say right now is that my wife and I are very afraid all of our deepest fears are likely to happen.

Richard G

[(Anonymous)]

As you perhaps don't know Nick (although I spent alot of time with you in the past and likely will again in the future, right?), it's hard to be a non-nine to fiver living in america that just so happens to use nearly every second of the waking day thinking and building new devices and things to use as "brushes" to paint pictures that most of the human populace will quite possibly not even like or respect...progressing in any sort of artistic(and I really hate using that word, but it's the most obvious one to use) leap whatsoever that isn't just the same fucking thing that has already happenned and paid off for someone (which is all art and music you're likely to hear, ever) takes ALL OF YOUR TIME. It's really hard to make the dispossible time to make the dispossible money at a brainless day job that will help me get out of this horrible country. Unfortunately no one's offerred to finance my outro lifestyle (and I'll happily take your offer if there is such a person reading this) in a European hillside yet, so I have to do what I NEED to do right now in order to make any sort of noticeable gash in the surface of the stagnant "art" world in the present and near future. Most of America hates bush...there's alot of both decent and retarded people living in America, likely too many in too far of a stretch of terrain to really concider it as one country...if only it would split, but that's not likely to happen anytime soon without the help of an atomic explosion or a superior earthquake. It really is true that there is little sense in "preaching to the converted"...you have to drive the political stakes into the hearts of the mindless zombies, not the people that agree with you're political views and want to see your right-brained creations. Now I must get back to building.....already lagging behind with all this typing.
all the love,
john flesh

[imomus.livejournal.com]

All I can tell you John is that I'm living in Berlin because it's cheaper than just about any other city in Europe, as well as because I feel I fit in with the politics and the culture. Rent is about half what it is in London, perhaps less. Food is cheaper. And I don't have to waste my time making records deconstructing the prejudices of people from Bromley and Romford. Was that my destiny, being an increasingly embittered critic of people who read The Daily Mail? If it was, doesn't that mean that my whole way of thinking was also being set by The Daily Mail?

Leaving Britain and becoming a 'world citizen' is why I met you, John, and could make records with a much more interesting dialectic -- and a much more interesting sound.

[carbootsale.livejournal.com]

I am not american, so i wish i could easily shrugg off the results of these elections. but this affects the whole world and i'm from a third world country who's government is a puppet, and idolises america so much. the american goverment often issues travel warnings against our country because they say we have terrorists in our backyard. they meddle with some of our governments decisions and our politicians are easy to oblige and still all praises for this land of milk and honey, and are very proud to say "we are allies in fighting the war against terror." everything america does greatly affects the world, but more so the wee little countries who does anything usa says because we 'owe' them so much (aid, debts etc).

...if only we had as much means as americans to leave this country we all would.

tidal wave

[sheppardzo-14.livejournal.com]

Thinking about it. Canada may be in our future. Montreal or Vancouver.

[lostdog.livejournal.com]

[Unknown site tag] shared a link to this, and i'm grateful.

up till today i've thought that people who leave the country are just deepening the problem. removing voices that need to be heard.

today however, i'm realizing my voice will never be heard, and there's no point to it. I can yell as much as i want. I can not change the opinions of those around me, let alone the millions of people i've never met.

I'll have to think of this further, but you're eloquence and my current feelings of disenfrangizement form a powerful argument

[lostdog.livejournal.com]

damn. givemethegun

[jenbugg.livejournal.com]

thank you. This is just what j_cannibal and I needed. We stayed up very late last night discussing where to move to. Is it very easy to move and get work permits and visas etc...?

[kismetcrash.livejournal.com]

thank you for this post.

[thevulgartrade.livejournal.com]

http://www.livejournal.com/users/insidiouswanker/293115.html

I'm holding a little writing contest today, and I thought I'd see if you and your readers are interested in participating. It seemed like it might be up your alley, as we all feel like venting a bit today.

Now back to the matter at hand.

Four years ago, I was 17 years old: seven months shy of drafting age, and consequently seven months shy of voting age. I worked on convincing every Republican I knew how foolish Bush was. I sat on pins and needles that night, unable to officially voice my screams of righteous indignation. Yesterday, I voted for the office of President for the first time in my life. Now, I can't tell what's more frustrating: watching a world-changing event, powerless to do anything to help, or trying to help and watching my efforts go wasted because I don't live in the right part of this country.

I want to leave, but at the same time, I feel like I need to be here to try to stop America from destroying itself. There are some wonderful things in this country that birthed me, and I don't want to see them destroyed.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I do think you've outlined quite a valid alternative solution to the problem, one just as radical as mine. Instead of leaving the country, all the liberals must actually get up and move to the red states. The thing is, they might start drifting right in that environment. Or get lynched. And even if they didn't think like the red state republicans, they'd probably need an SUV or a pickup truck if they were in a rural area. They'd slowly start to resemble the enemy.

[celticdreamz.livejournal.com]

There are sooo many districs and cities and regions of America that just moving around the country is like going to other nations. If you want to live in a liberal culture, by all means, move to California. If you like more "traditional values" move to the South. If you want to be a hermit, move to Alaska. Big cities, small cities, middle of nowhere, America has it all. And you can get to it without a passport.

[astro-astro.livejournal.com]

kerry concedes the election and now it snows for the first time this year in town. (maybe not the first time)
it's hard to be a montanan in a season like this. though we passed medical marijuana, we amended our constitution to ban homosexual marriages. a democratic governor (lightly democratic), but three electoral votes are the president's. now it's snowing.
i think 2005 will bring massive change for me, a hometown montanan. ill spring over to nyc in january and live for a time there with my sister. then, come february, take another leap and land on the other side of the world. i hope they like montanans in new zealand.

remembering the parade of glowing souls

[all1lla.livejournal.com]

i can't help but think of this past friday's critical mass bicycle ride, as it rolled past the window. there were hundreds of beautiful souls glowing and gliding along together, with flashing lights and flowers and costumes flapping in the wind. and i thought about the last time i rode in a similar ride. and i though about how right now it's easy to feel like we're all lone riders on this dark night in world politics. and i remember that a lone rider may feel alone on the streets at night, but a whole group like i saw during the critical mass not only makes each other feel warm and safe, but sheds enough light to make the people *around* the light feel warm and safe, too. and where were the *authorities* that we sometimes fear will see our light and crack down out of their own fear? no, the police were *leading* the pack, helping to make traffic conditions safe for the snaking line of cyclistas. don't want to shine your light alone during this dark night? then don't. use your innate intelligence to find your light and make your lighthouse. the lighthouse is the combination of many a bright soul, coming together to support each other. find each other. use your internet savvy. use your eyes. use your heart. put out waves into the universe. and wait. it takes time for waves to echo back. in my humble opinion: we're not free until we're ALL free. WE are not free, until WE are ALL free. and we ALL have light. and we all deserve love. and we are all wanting to be found. and if those who feel their hearts and know how to shine our lights won't give love to those *other* that we call the "evil empire" or the "dark side" then those same people who have light (although perhaps hidden) will find connection and support and security through other means. maybe through manipulation, fear mongering, power-tripping, and greed. if our fun is based on feeling that we have something that those *other people* don't have, then we only strengthen the artificial lines of division. love like your life depends on it. and then let's see what this election is *really* about.

[masnomas.livejournal.com]

But what would I do with out access to the wonderful layered intellect that is American culture. The movies, the Music. The compassionate conservatism that allows homosexuals to vote and own property....

Wait a minute. Why am I still here?

[(Anonymous)]

have you seen the last avedon pictures for the new yorker?

http://www.newyorker.com/online/slideshows/pop/?041108onslpo_avedon

sure, Roethke is canadian. but i'm not saying i want to move there. even if it's a good idea.

[malora-ann.livejournal.com]

The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

- theodore roethke

Re: sure, Roethke is canadian. but i'm not saying i want to move there. even if it's a good idea.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It's nice to see so much poetry on this thread. Speaking of which, I wanted to mention that I just learned that an American poet who lived for twenty years in 'exile' in London, Michael Donaghy, died in September, aged 50.



Michael was a very precise, startling, witty writer who produced only a handful of poems each year, memorised them, and performed them compellingly. His work has some of the lucid, ludic precision of Nicholson Baker. He was a charming, loveable man, an avid Irish folk musician and a great teller of jokes. I was lucky enough to know him a little when I hung out on the fringes of the poetry scene at the Troubadour coffee house in Earl's Court in the late 80s. He's remembered by friends here (http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/features/story.jsp?story=567734) and you can read an interview here (http://www.mdx.ac.uk/rescen/NWPodia/NWpodRLee.html). Michael was an example of an American under-appreciated in his own land, flourishing away from the US -- he was published by Oxford Poetry, and won several prizes. Many of the voices on that reminiscences thread are American friends of mine who ended up, permanently, in London: Tamar Yoseloff, Alison Spritzler-Rose.

[neurasthenic.livejournal.com]

Pushing thru' the market square, so many mothers sighing
News had just come over, we had five years left to cry in
News guy wept and told us, Earth was really dying
Cried so much his face was wet, then I knew he was not lying
...


Five Years...my song for today. And I sympathize with you John Flesh, I'm in college now (which I often regret) but I do not look forward to trying to hack out a life of art and thinking in this country...

..the best written assessment of the 'election'

[(Anonymous)]

...games of old white men playing spin the gun in their secret chamber:

invoking the dead ghosts of richard nixion: adolf hitler: stalin: joseph mc carthy: j. edgar hover: pol pot of cambodia:

henry kissenger sits somewhere stroking his small shriveled jewish cock as the abe lincoln with the 'jfk' logos candidate has played his part oh so well --

the plot-line for this election haas served the roman ghost empire well - the most intelligent minds and peoples spent time and monies and efforts in overturning the emperor but instead just fed his parasitic machine designed to play the tune to summon the monkey boys to arms:

..you know the monkey boys well -- right now they are collectively gathered at their computers sniffing for those 'fucking libels' to assassinate and kill in virtual time with their snappy reparte:

'...hey faggot -- fuck you: you don't like our president then fuck you you osama bin laden fag you.. fuck you...'

or the most appropiate call to monkey boy arms --

'...hey fucker: do you remember that something called 9-11....'

these are the monkey boys: all teeth and all shit flung from their tree tops and their high hyper screechings when challenged with the facts behind the tryanny of monkey man george (..to observe this monkey boy phenomenon i recommend paying a visit to that website of paper thin rhetoric http://slate.msn.com/ where the vitrolic monkey boys bare their teeth and fling their shit at those '..fucking fags...') because monkey man george and his old white monkey boys network have conjured effective cold war propaganda tactics to keep the cold war burning for another fifty years and more:

...but alas i am here to say kudos imomus for this journal entry: five months ago my wife and our now 20 month old daughter chiyoni decided to re-locate to montreal quebec where we don't speak french hardly but we are connected to ourselves more now than our years living in the states as we both have found montreal quebec to offer us the living lab to construct our cut-and-pastings to feed our spirit and to feed our minds:

while the monkey boys beat their chest and proclaim victory over those 'fucking faggots...' the wounds now become cancerous as the already dead body of america becomes the sort of parasitic viral zombie that can be observed in a simple game of resident evil ---

zombies led by the grandest zombie of them all:

tally-ho america -- you have chosen your destiny.

thanks for the journal entry imomus.