A Reassuring Foreignness

From: Childhood Education, Fall 1998 v75 n1 p36(2)
Children on the move: third culture kids. (education of children who live outside of their native country for periods of time) Warna D. Gillies.

Certain disadvantages are associated with being a TCK, as well. Exposed to a
variety of cultural influences, TCKs feel culturally separate from both their
parents and their peers. The TCK may share a sense of membership in multiple
cultures, yet lack ownership of any one culture (Pollock, 1985). Pollock
maintains that this dynamic continues throughout life; the TCK is adrift, with
respect to cultural ownership. Sara Mansfield Taber, who grew up in an
internationally mobile family, reflects on her third culture identity:

Will I ever feel like a legitimate American? I don't know. I am most comfortable
with myself as a foreigner. I might be most at home living part-time in the
United States and the other part in another country. Or perhaps at a spot
mid-way across a sea. I'm not sure. One of these days perhaps I will move to
Nepal. In the meanwhile, I am going along fairly happily, living in Washington.
(McCluskey, 1994, p. 48)

There is an interesting insight here to which I can relate. When you both are and are not American, sometimes it is easier to be a foreigner. That is, when you feel not at home, at times, in what should be 'legitimately' your home, there's an awful paranoia and a disturbing sensation of inauthenticity. You look and sound like an American, right, you must feel like one?

In contrast, when you're abroad and you feel out of place, there is a definable excuse for it, which is fabulously reassuring in a counter-intuitive way.

Terminal Cool

Terminal Cool

Cool-worry is at the root of the immature American character. The cardinal American vice and the underlying central American cultural 'export' is the concept of cool.

more . . .

I think there is some irony: a country almost obsessively caught up in the iconic Individual at the same time filled with cool-conformers. "Cool" should be defined as emotionally distanced and reserved. This distance leads to the iconic Outsider, literally too cool for the scene. The Outsider, too strong, individualistic, or alienated, is also a romanticized figure. I don't want to go into all the connotations of cool in the current social sense. You get it.

The Outsider also has perspective; is therefore a critic, an observer, a rebel, etc. This seems to fit within the icon of the Individual.

Obviously in practice, cool is actually conformity. The modern sensibility of cool involves acceptability or popularity. YET, it keeps the rejectionist attitude toward square culture, especially secondary age education, untrendy clothing or speech; perhaps, at a later stage, even work responsibility and "the man."

During intercultural contact I've always observed in many Americans a real undercurrent of insecurity: I attribute this to the perhaps unconscious but ingrained social value to appear cool. When I was a student abroad years ago I met in Germany, Holland, and Ireland many other American students, and observed many meetings as well. Very often, there was a sullen aspect to the encounter. I remember hearing an encounter between two college students who discovered each other in Berlin in November of 1989, during the fall of the Wall. I cringed at how many times the two had to say "dude" and "man" to each other, words almost used as weapons.

There was an awful deadness to their personalities. Both students seemed to be the only American in their respective groups. The encounter was ruining each one's individual cache. Americans are not citizens of the world usually, and partly I felt like each student in the above example was upset that their personal cool experience was being invaded by another American. They suddenly racheted up the cool quotient like duelists. Exactly at that moment they became uniteresting.

Coolness is itself immature, and perhaps these students were just that: callow. However, if you've been abroad at all you must get the sense of a refreshing social openness that exists at least at times between people who are not primarily concerned with stifling themselves with cool-worry. Take for example, Irish verbal acuity and joy of wit. I've spoken about other cultural reasons for this trait (post-colonial issues, irony), but consider that Americans may not be verbally acute because it is uncool to be so. Like, um, you know?

more . . .

Note to self

posts on:

the narcissism of a blog about yourself

the narcissism of the very notion of "identity" musings

discuss the causes of Irish jealousy about the appropriation of "Irishness" by others.

desire to get actual stats/demographics on 1st gens of this era

Nietzsche: freedom from conviction

Essay on Michelle Shocked at the Olympia

Revised lyrics and cultural smugness

So in one section of the song "Back in Ireland", I tried to address a certain aspect of American smugness. To whit, the smugness of cultural superiority, displayed in two Types: the American at home, ignorant of the world; and, Tourist on parade abroad, aka Ugly American. I think my stanza confuses the two.

The lyrics:

Met a military man in that bar down in Baggot Street
A belligerent boyo from Boise, ya know
He had done the world over from Bangkok to Bantry
And of course for him, ya know, it only went to show,
How great was his state.

These are actually the revised lyrics. Originally, I had written:

Met a military man in that bar down in Baggot Street
A belligerent bullocks from Boise, ya know
He had done the world over from Bangkok to Bantry
And of course for him, ya know, it only went to show,
How great was the States.

The original lyrics had grown out of the genuine feeling I had at the time, which wasn't so much an attack on the States as a lashing out at anything that didn't involve remaining in Dublin.

I wonder if I have cowardly retreated from that original statement. I don't know if it describes my feelings now, but it did then.

I sang the original when I opened for Jez Lowe and the Bad Pennies, and at other times, and I saw Jez wince at the word "bullocks". Too strong for coffee house? Too immature?

I have sung the newer version many times now: It seems to go over better. Maybe it's all perception.

DIGRESSION!:
I don't know how I feel about "coffee house" or "folkie" requirements. Do I "mature" my presentation as an artist? Isn't there an hypocrisy in the idea that subtlety is the only virtue. I think a lot of thoughtful artists and performances are long on pose and short on energy. I've heard the same cliches and superficiality in "real" music as I do in pop music.

END DIGRESSION.

The stanza's biggest shortcoming: I meant to attack a type of smug American at home, certain of America's "number 1!" status, with no actual experience of other cultures or governments. Instead, the stanza talks about a man who has traveled abroad, yet only finds confirmation of his expectations. A problem here. I guess this is where the other sentiment of the song--my preference at that moment for Ireland over anywhere else--bleeds in. If the man has world experience and prefers America, so be it. I couldn't criticize his experience. In the song, I do disagree with his opinion.

Hypertext dictionary

This link is to the coolest hypertext dictionary I've found: Hyperflow. Just start surfing the linked words to their definitions, and you will find that it is all . . . mesmerisingly . . . connected . . . Also, perhaps you'll get lucky and find a word you can define yourself. Happy spiraling in a gyre.

Irish (in America) Smugness

After we returned to the U.S. in '97, several activities kept me alive. Set dancing at the Burren Pub in Somerville, MA on Monday nights was one. I had no background in dancing of any kind, but Irish associations of the music and the setting, and of course the presence of many Irish in the place, as well as the sheer physicality of dancing, allowed me emotional release from the anxiety of return.

After the 8-10pm lessons were over we would all move out to the front of the pub where a session picked up at 10pm. Even if the front room were crowded our instructor, Ger, would organize a set there near the gently amplified session, and I like other realtive newcomers hoped to be deigned worthy to join a few of the long-time dance regulars in the Plain or the Sliabh Lucra set. It helped a bit to be a guy, because most of the pros were women. It helped to have a bit of coordination. A personality didn't hurt either. I knew I qualified on the first two! An extra hour of dancing was worth the trepidation of so subtly not being chosen, and the chance to whirl through the midst of a crush of bodies--even especially the violent career into and through the drinkers--we were subversives, dancing aloud amid the cool and the drunk--left me exhausted, which was a good state to be in after an extended pent up anxiety.

One particular night I was dancing with my partner in the front room, and a surly Irish guy in the room was giving an increasing amount of agro as the set dancers upset his space. On one gallop through I heard him make a Yank comment, because he assumed most the dancers were Yanks. He disliked the dancing, but he enjoyed disliking it so he could slag Americans. At that moment I unleashed a stream of anti-Irish invective to my partner I didn't know was in me until that moment.

"I got enough of that "stupid Yank" nonsense in Ireland where I had to put up
with it, but I'll be damned if I take any here in Boston from a fucking
immigrant."

Some Irish enjoy a certain smugness in regard to the t'ickness of Americans, and some continue to enjoy it here in this country. For all that Americans indulge in annoying blarneyed stereotypes, so do Irish. The Irish defense of their "Irishness" involves easy assumptions of those darn "Irish" Americans, and they--the Irish, some--practice the generalization that every Irish American is guilty of the same ignorance.

There weren't any "stupid Yanks" in that dance set. Most were Irish or first gen. with strong, real ties to Ireland. But more importantly, none of them were practicing plastic paddyhood and "wannabe" endeavors, and none were bad dancers on account of their "non-Irishness." They just liked to dance. None of them, including me, would appreciate having to defend their interests or their Irishness. All of them, however, would undertsand the issue.