It's what ya call growing up

So, what's the best way to feel better about living in a place where you feel out-of-place and foreign? Why, go to a place where you feel ever more out of place and foreign, of course! Seriously, I arrived back in London yesterday, and suddenly everything felt... familiar. Comfortable, even. I realized this with a shock.

Here's the thing: you'd think that with a childhood like mine, in which I changed schools every two years, I would feel very comfortable in unfamiliar situations, right? Well, to a certain extent this is very true—some of you know the story about my adviser saying to me, before a particularly tense dinner with famous musicologists that hated each other: "Oh Greg, you can talk to anyone..." I concede this, and I'm in fact proud of how I can ingratiate myself into so many different, seemingly incompatible circles of friends.

But from a different angle, this same ability to fit into different social situations become a rather self-defeating need to fit in. Thus I was miserable when I first got here, not just because I was homesick and all that, but also because my rather deep-seated psychological mechanisms to fit in would never work—I would always be "an American." As some of you will remember, the situation was the same in France a year ago, but ten times worse. (At least in the UK I didn't stop eating because I was too afraid to go to the grocery store...) When even a little piece of my self-presentation is taken out of my control, I think, because of my peripatetic childhood, it is more upsetting to me than to most other people. (This may also be a gay thing. Aren't there those who say that homos are over-represented in careers focusing on surface and appearance because little gay boys were forced to police their own self presentation to a greater degree than little straight boys?) Does all this sound like just a rationalization for the fact that I'm just insecure? Well, perhaps, although I normally don't think of myself as a particularly insecure person.

The point that this is all leading up to is: I'm getting better. I was actually quite comfortable in France, although god knows my French isn't much better than it used to be. I'm just learning to relax, to just accept that there will be situation where you won't fit, and that's okay. I probably should have figured this out years ago, but, particularly in San Francisco, there was never any need to, y'know? Those comments I got from a lot of people about this trip to the UK being good for me, which I always rejected in my head, might be turning out to be right, although perhaps not exactly in they way they were intended.

This whole issue was driven home by a brief email exchange with a figure from my past. Out of the blue I receive an email from a particular ex-Berkeley ex-colleague, whom some of you will remember all too well. You know, the one with the excellent German pronunciation. Let's call her "Fräulein Glockenspiel." So, while I'm in Paris, she emails me out of the blue, asking what I'm up to, and tells me that she's living in Paris for the year. "Hey," I reply, "I'm in Paris right now!" We tried to have lunch on Easter, but I lost her number. Anyway, in the email she summed up her Paris experience by saying (I paraphrase): "I find it really annoying that whenever I talk to someone I say pouvez-vous parler plus lentement s'il vous plaît, and then instead of repeating themselves more slowly like I asked, they just switch to English! Can you believe it!?"

Yes, Fräulein, I can believe it, and if you took a half a minute to put yourself in their shoes you would believe it too. This, I submit, is an example of my mirror image, a person with no concept of their own self-presentation whatsoever. (Berkeley people will recall that Fräulein Glockenspiel's experience in the UCB Music Department confirms this impression.) It was only when she said this that I consciously realized: I would never dream of asking someone to speak more slowly! It would be all but yelling out loud, "I am an outsider!" Rather, when I don't understand something in French, I simply spit out pardon? or quoi? and make a facial expression that, ever so subtly, implies that it is their fault that I didn't understand them, rather than my own. Works every time.

By the way, did I mention that the bibliothecaire who did my entrance interview for the BN assumed I was British? Also, when I went to the opera I was seated next to a rich old lady who couldn't tell I was American from my accent either. (When I told this story to P—'s flatmate, she commented, "it much have been rich, deaf, old lady..." but I choose to ignore this.) So, oddly, it is just when I relax into my role as a foreigner that my foreignness become less pronounced! Who'da thought!

There is much to report from my last few days in Paris, but it will remain mostly unblogged, I'm afraid. The opera (Prokofiev's War and Peace, in the Zambello production that some UCB folk will remember from her residency) was fantastic. It is a massive work, and I think there's something to be written about how the love scenes are so much less emotionally affecting than the patriotic scenes—I only really wept during the Act I "epilogue" chorus, and the amazing moment when general Kutuzov, having made the dreadful decision to sacrifice the capital in order to save the army, sings "Moscow! Mother of the cities of Russia! You fade before our eyes!" My friend the Spaniard would say, in his delightfully unidiomatic English, "I cried all my tears..." (By the way, are these moments tainted by Stalin? Discuss.)

Work went very well, I met P—'s new boyfriend, I got kicked out of A—'s apartment after an unexpected visitor arrived, I didn't meet up with Fräulein, I spent some time in the Grands Magasins (comme l'habitude), I saw La Vie Aquatique (thankfully subtitled, not dubbed) and really enjoyed it. More soon.