Hola! Que tal?
I want to encourage anyone visiting this blog of my Spanish adventure to click to your right and become a follower. This way you can receive notices when I post an update and help me to develop a broader audience for my writing. For those who don't know I also have a blog at www.peaceinsilence.blogspot.com with over three years worth of posts to explore. Feel free to check that out as well. Thanks for taking an interest! All the best!
Ciao,
Jeff
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
When Will We Ripen Culturally?
The excitement of my day-to-day life in Spain is not always as noteworthy as I would like it to be. Although perhaps I'm looking too hard for the grandiose when in actuality every day here holds some subtle difference that I find to be fairly amusing. For instance, one of the things that makes me laugh out loud is hearing really shitty American music blaring from car windows and in store fronts. Sometimes this deal is even sweetened with the driver banging enthusiastically on the steering wheel or looking really serious about how cutting-edge he is with his 1992 Jon Bon Jovi album rockin' in the car stereo. I mean, to each his own. One doesn't want to be too much of a musical chauvinist when traveling in someone else's country, but I have to wonder if they even know what the song is about. My landlady has the same problem (in my humble opinion), but she likes to make it even harder on me by reducing the already crappy music to bad light jazz versions of, for example, "My Heart Goes On," by Celine Dion. Ouch! I'm sitting in a virtual breeding ground of rich passionate art, culture, and music--the birthplace of flamenco, salsa, and avantgarde artistry--and we're listening to f-ing Celine Dion and Bon Jovi! The reach of American culture is more than just a little annoying out of the context of fast food drive-throughs and neon-sign commercial mainstreets. If you'll pardon my poor Barcelona pun, one might say it's just a bit Gaudi. Kind of like say a skyscraper placed in the middle of a National Park? Yeah, a bit like that. It just doesn't belong here.
This brings me to a larger point America: we really need to allow our country to ripen artistically and culturally. Perhaps now that we're socialist people will stop spending all hours of their short time on the planet pursuing individual wealth and actually take an interest in what our "Greatest Country in the World" has to show for all its hard work. In my Spanish class yesterday, we were going around the room and offering (in Spanish of course) what some or our country's greatest atributes, exports, remarkable foods, etc. were and it was interesting that the guy from California and I had the hardest time coming up with examples. In the end I had to say things like, "Hamburgers, Coca-Cola, junk food, and Hollywood." It hurt me. It really did. All the trite, unhealthy aspects I try at all costs to avoid about my own culture were the only things that others around the world think we all partake in on a daily basis. Although the guy from Ireland was quick to point out that our greatest export was actually FREEDOM!! Ha ha! To be fair though, he and the girl from London could only come up with fish and chips and exporting, "civilization." So maybe white people are just a little stuffy for creativity. We give it a shot, but we just can't seem to get past our need for extreme analytical thinking, clean, orderly environments, and practical uses for...well, anything that takes time or costs money. Except prefabricated ceramic livestock animals to decorate kitchen shelves. Americans love that stuff. Art in its finest form.
Okay I'll be nice now. Spain does obviously have its problems like everywhere else, but the humanity of the culture is what is remarkable. No prize is so great that they would put it above taking care of the people who live here. The sense of community is incredible. Today I went to the Picasso Museu and on my way off the metro stopped in at a coffee shop to grab a quick cafe negro (which is actually an Americano by our standards). It was 2 in the afternoon, so it was right about seista time. The place was teeming with people crammed around the little tables with sandwiches, finger-foods, and petite cups of espresso. For two hours right in the middle of the day, everyone just stops working and goes out for lunch and a nap. At four they return to work for a few more hours, have a late dinner (perhaps at one of the many outdoor cafes all over the city) and drinks (if they so desire) and don't go to bed until midnight or so. Work the next day starts in the late morning around 10 or so and around they go again. I'm not sure how it got to be this way, but it seems to utilize the entire day for enjoying life while cramming work in somewhere in the middle. Much different than the states where work seems to be the center piece of life and anywhere one can fit-in leisure is a fortunate luxury. I believe this happens in large part because of the strong desire for Americans to own homes. Home ownership doesn't seem to mean much if anything to people here. At least in Barcelona proper the trend seems to be to own a large flat if one has money and people don't seem the least bit put-out to rent rooms out after their children have grown. Again, this plays into the sense of community here. There isn't the, "This is my property, that's yours. I can do what I want on this side of the fence and you keep your business over there." Some would call this personal freedom, but as we've seen it really just leads to isolation, petty fighting, and the need to get further and further away from the actual city where all the culture and entertainment exists in the first place.
So I wonder if one day we will ripen culturally. I have a feeling we will as more Americans start "jumping the pond" to see more of the civilized world and come to similar conclusions as myself, that for all our boasting and chest-beating about freedom we really don't enjoy the finer parts of life very often in the states. When given the choice to live in a way where the people rule and the government and businesses try to maintain some type of order while meeting the people's needs or like we do in the states where the people live in constant fear of...well pretty much everything from the germs on the rim of the toilet to the CEOs that have more power than most evil dictators of yore, I think they will likely see that this way is much more enjoyable for the vast majority of individuals.
This brings me to a larger point America: we really need to allow our country to ripen artistically and culturally. Perhaps now that we're socialist people will stop spending all hours of their short time on the planet pursuing individual wealth and actually take an interest in what our "Greatest Country in the World" has to show for all its hard work. In my Spanish class yesterday, we were going around the room and offering (in Spanish of course) what some or our country's greatest atributes, exports, remarkable foods, etc. were and it was interesting that the guy from California and I had the hardest time coming up with examples. In the end I had to say things like, "Hamburgers, Coca-Cola, junk food, and Hollywood." It hurt me. It really did. All the trite, unhealthy aspects I try at all costs to avoid about my own culture were the only things that others around the world think we all partake in on a daily basis. Although the guy from Ireland was quick to point out that our greatest export was actually FREEDOM!! Ha ha! To be fair though, he and the girl from London could only come up with fish and chips and exporting, "civilization." So maybe white people are just a little stuffy for creativity. We give it a shot, but we just can't seem to get past our need for extreme analytical thinking, clean, orderly environments, and practical uses for...well, anything that takes time or costs money. Except prefabricated ceramic livestock animals to decorate kitchen shelves. Americans love that stuff. Art in its finest form.
Okay I'll be nice now. Spain does obviously have its problems like everywhere else, but the humanity of the culture is what is remarkable. No prize is so great that they would put it above taking care of the people who live here. The sense of community is incredible. Today I went to the Picasso Museu and on my way off the metro stopped in at a coffee shop to grab a quick cafe negro (which is actually an Americano by our standards). It was 2 in the afternoon, so it was right about seista time. The place was teeming with people crammed around the little tables with sandwiches, finger-foods, and petite cups of espresso. For two hours right in the middle of the day, everyone just stops working and goes out for lunch and a nap. At four they return to work for a few more hours, have a late dinner (perhaps at one of the many outdoor cafes all over the city) and drinks (if they so desire) and don't go to bed until midnight or so. Work the next day starts in the late morning around 10 or so and around they go again. I'm not sure how it got to be this way, but it seems to utilize the entire day for enjoying life while cramming work in somewhere in the middle. Much different than the states where work seems to be the center piece of life and anywhere one can fit-in leisure is a fortunate luxury. I believe this happens in large part because of the strong desire for Americans to own homes. Home ownership doesn't seem to mean much if anything to people here. At least in Barcelona proper the trend seems to be to own a large flat if one has money and people don't seem the least bit put-out to rent rooms out after their children have grown. Again, this plays into the sense of community here. There isn't the, "This is my property, that's yours. I can do what I want on this side of the fence and you keep your business over there." Some would call this personal freedom, but as we've seen it really just leads to isolation, petty fighting, and the need to get further and further away from the actual city where all the culture and entertainment exists in the first place.
So I wonder if one day we will ripen culturally. I have a feeling we will as more Americans start "jumping the pond" to see more of the civilized world and come to similar conclusions as myself, that for all our boasting and chest-beating about freedom we really don't enjoy the finer parts of life very often in the states. When given the choice to live in a way where the people rule and the government and businesses try to maintain some type of order while meeting the people's needs or like we do in the states where the people live in constant fear of...well pretty much everything from the germs on the rim of the toilet to the CEOs that have more power than most evil dictators of yore, I think they will likely see that this way is much more enjoyable for the vast majority of individuals.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Abroad, I am a Badly Written Novel
One of the more difficult things about living in a foreign country is that YOU as an individual--as a unique combination of traits and skills and personality--cease to exist. Instead you become a cardboard cutout; a poorly written character made up of your nationality, your interests (as long as they aren't too "weird" to talk about), your religion (if you have one), your worldview, your wardrobe, and your reason for being in a country that is not the one you were born in. Hence, your own ideas about the world are extremely difficult to articulate, especially when others you are speaking to have their own language and understand very little of the complexities of your personal views. For example, I am an American who is married, plays guitar, majored in English (like a self-indulgent American would), dresses rather casually, and has not experienced much of other cultures in the world aside from reading books. This is the extent of most conversations one has with individuals abroad. Unless one is there to stay and can make actual friends and perhaps forge more intimate relationships, it is difficult to become more than the badly written John Grisham version of yourself.
As that sense of inner essence fades one truly does start to feel the pull of the plot-driven story carrying him along as the author only discusses his cliche interests in pretty things and pretty people and stereotypical elements of the surrounding setting while the real focus becomes the forces that be that move this weak and incapable character down stream like the fallen leaf of an Oak tree in autumn. Even in one's own country there is extreme pressure to adhere to the stereotypes and cultural norms that are formed within one's own little world, but in someone else's little world standing out can be to risk saftey and survival. And so one crouches low attempts not to be seen or heard saying or doing anything out of place; camoflauged against the cultural backdrop of what is typical for some, and foreign and exotic to others. Expressing real thoughts and emotions becomes lost in the heavy accents and small vocabularies of one another's languages and soon one is no more than a babbling child wandering unknown streets and staring at the pretty, shiny sites. A tourist. An on-the-nose camera shot. A failed artistic attempt at reflecting culture and humanity.
"You have 90 days in our little world. See what we've set aside for you to see and go home before you see too much."
As that sense of inner essence fades one truly does start to feel the pull of the plot-driven story carrying him along as the author only discusses his cliche interests in pretty things and pretty people and stereotypical elements of the surrounding setting while the real focus becomes the forces that be that move this weak and incapable character down stream like the fallen leaf of an Oak tree in autumn. Even in one's own country there is extreme pressure to adhere to the stereotypes and cultural norms that are formed within one's own little world, but in someone else's little world standing out can be to risk saftey and survival. And so one crouches low attempts not to be seen or heard saying or doing anything out of place; camoflauged against the cultural backdrop of what is typical for some, and foreign and exotic to others. Expressing real thoughts and emotions becomes lost in the heavy accents and small vocabularies of one another's languages and soon one is no more than a babbling child wandering unknown streets and staring at the pretty, shiny sites. A tourist. An on-the-nose camera shot. A failed artistic attempt at reflecting culture and humanity.
"You have 90 days in our little world. See what we've set aside for you to see and go home before you see too much."
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
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