Driving Through Mythical America
the lone highway
I have spent the last few days attempting to get my sleeping patterns back into something resembling UK time – this has involved lots of catnapping and one or two threatened headaches. I’ve not really been of a mind to put together a blog entry about the trip to the US although I have had opportunity to churn some thoughts around. So here are some thoughts – on the trip as a whole and not on DART specifically.
I have been quite a frequent visitor to the US over the last decade – to New York City a couple of times, to Washington DC and to Cambridge/Boston at least three times that I can remember. I always enjoy visiting and feel comfortable in American civic society. There are some things, though, which strike the European visitor as different. In a blog entry for 8 June 2006 on my return from Washington I wrote:
I didn’t get a lot of time to wander around the City but I did the best I could. Tourist central was around the White House of course, the need for souvenirs being met by ranks of stalls all selling the same items but with signs in various species of and approximations to English – I particularly enjoyed “T-Shites, 3 for $10”. Also around the White House, of course, were lots of police and secret service guys with big guns and sharp uniforms and the equally ferocious international press corps camped on the lawn. I don’t know what it is about the uniforms – there seemed to be an almost fetishistic fascination with both them and ritual display all over the place. I walked down to the Washington Monument which was surrounded by multiple Stars and Stripes – so many as to remove any dignifying effect that they might have had. I found myself wondering whether they represented an earnest, if overdone, patriotism or, alternatively, a desperate assertion of a yearned for national identity. The effect was also marred by the young christian rock-band in the open-air auditorium. I don’t mind music which is faith based – just the opposite actually I’m happy to listen to a wide range of such from Monteverdi and Palestrina to Doc Watson with all points in between; I am allergic to drivel, though, and that, I’m afraid, is what this was.
I recalled this entry while we were first in Dover, New Hampshire and thence in Arlington/Cambridge/Boston and thought again about the assertion of identity.
One original owner....
While nowhere near as prevalent as in DC, there were nevertheless a lot of flags about. I noticed a couple of houses which also had US Marine Corps flags hanging from the porch and there was one elderly veteran catching the 77 bus from Porter Square out to Arlington wearing a Marines cap with assorted insignia affixed. Once again I wondered about the overt expression of symbols of identity and what was in the minds of the people doing this. Of course in the case of the Marine Corps guys there was no doubt pride in their service but over here that would normally take the form of a discrete lapel badge.
A quite separate expression of claimed identity was to be found in Fury’s Publick House in Dover where we danced. They were having an Irish Night (it was also an Irish bar) and there was much leaping up and down and expressing of approval as the band sang pro-IRA songs. Quite aside from their evident ignorance of precisely what they were giving approval to (they would not, for example, have been so enthusiastic had someone trotted out some doggerel praising al-Qaeda) I wondered what identity, exactly, they were trying to adopt.
The blessed St. Jerry
After Fury’s we danced in The Barley Pub which was having a Bluegrass open-mic night. The guy who was leading the session (whom I had asked if it was OK to dance) spoke in an argot straight from the counter-culture of the late sixties/early seventies and I was struck by the ironic realisation that it was OK to be nonconformist so long as you did it in an acceptable and recognisable way: you need to conform to an acceptable mode of nonconformity.
Aside from eccentrics sword dancing in pubs I only saw one true nonconformist: she was, by her appearance, well into her seventies (perhaps older) with pierced nose and lower lip, wearing chunky headphones over her baseball cap through which a grey/blond ponytail poked. Her gigantic earings dangled over the faux leopardskin of her lapels and she offset the ensemble with rings on each finger and a set of bangles on her right-wrist. Somehow I found that a truer staking of a claim to individual identity than any other I saw.
Of course, there is nothing new in these comments on America’s continuing and restless search for identity. Thomas Wolfe captured it a century ago:
And nowhere that we went was far: the earth and the sky were close and near. And the old hunger returned – the terrible and obscure hunger that haunts and hurts Americans, and makes us exiles at home and strangers wherever we go.
Oh, I will go up and down the country and back and forth across the country. I will go out West where the states are square. I will go to Boise and Helena, Albuquerque and the two Dakotas and all the unknown places. Say brother, have you heard the roar of the fast express? Have you seen starlight on the rails?
Well hello there...
And identity is always in the making, never made; so where do these ramblings get me? Well, I’m not sure except that I think it links to the notion that one’s strengths are also one’s weaknesses. The restless searching for identity is part of what makes America such a vibrant place to visit and is attractive in combination with a pervasive civility and generosity of spirit. It also underpins an insecurity which speaks to us through the continual poisonous cynicism of elements of the US polity and especially in the unpleasant combination of religious fundamentalism and sociopathic political attitudes. Hint: there is no necessary identity between fiscal conservatism, absence of social empathy or compassion, and religious belief.
I hope that doesn’t come across as too downbeat: I thoroughly enjoyed the trip, made (and remade) friendships with some wonderful people and had a blast. I could quite happily have stayed longer and travelled more widely.
And so now I need to think about how next to visit and hopefully move inland from the East Coast. I have some thoughts slowly fermenting in the back of my mind which may, or may not, come to anything.
Mind you, it is a while since I was last in Canada….
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