A Sort of Homecoming

So, I've crossed big waters and returned stateside for a little. Got in two weeks ago. Not too big of a reverse culture shock, but I'm not shocked by much these days. I spent a few days adjusting (I felt like I was in a decompression chamber or something) by reading R. Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy morning to evening. What a lovely book, that.

I've got a lot of traveling ahead of me this summer. I already spent a week in New York City and a week in Pittsburgh, and starting tomorrow I'm gonna be bouncing around a good bit.

A few things I've been thinking about these Unitified States:

1 - No matter where you are in America del Norte, you are constantly bombarded by advertisements. All of your senses are involved in this. Even before you leave the airport, it is like you are Dresden and advertisements are firebombs. We are born and bred to consume. Consume. Consume.

2 - American folks's music is dead. People don't make music anymore, 'musicians' do. Popular opinion seems to assert that Normal Joes ain't got the right to make a peep, that they should Listen Only. Lots and lots of folks are walking around with little white cords in their ears, but no one's singing. Very different from the streets of Morocco where people walk around humming and clapping and singing out songs that everyone knows, songs that seem to be alive inside the people, songs that get up and stretch out their lazy limbs every once in a way, and then sink back down into silence. (At least if you're in the right neighborhood, and with the right Moroccans.)

3 - It's amazing the vast quantity of different kinds of things you can buy here in America. It's really a strange luxury. It makes 'brand identity' possible: you can buy something that no one else you know has, and feel like a unique person (consumer) or you can buy the brand that all your friends buy. But the point it that you have a choice. In Morocco, you buy what there is. You don't get to choose. If you want a motorcycle, you really only have 2 or 3 choices, and they're more or less the same anyway. Moreover, whichever one you get, you will almost certainly see someone else with the same motorcycle on every block. You just don't base any of your individuality, of your humanity, on the things that you buy. You buy something because you need it, not because it expresses you in any way. This is highly contrastive to America, where people are looking for some sort of individuality through their relationship with the market.

I'm already feeling stressed out about the new national holiday, Election Season. I spent most of the day trying to be a responsible voter, doing some research on the presidential candidates. Still trying to decide if I can in good conscience vote for Barack Obama. Wondering if it's true what Ron Paul says, that Obama wants to send more troops into Afghanistan, that he wants to continue to expand the US military's policing role around the world. I'm very uneasy to think that he might be very little less of a warmonger than, ahem, anybody else working for them big political parties. And that's what I'm starting to think... Please correct me if I'm wrong, throw me a note that'll convince me otherwise.

Peace Out, for the moment.