Subterranean Homesick Blues

KGSM Student Radio

I’ve intentinoally been spending as much time alone as possible this week. Initially it was because I was homesick for the first time since my arrival and I thought I needed some space from the noise and commotion of my normal affairs here. It’s given me time to reflect on this experience, which is now a third finished, and how it has helped me as an individual. After Chinese class on tuesday I had a secondary goal, to practice my Chinese.

My Chinese class moves quickly, like everything here, and I sometimes find myself lost in the tones, fumbling helplessly to write down a phonetic pronounciation while the rest of the class presses forward with the rest of the lesson. There are a few phrases Ican say with almost total confidence: my introduction devotees will remember from a few weeks ago, counting and forming complex numbers, handling money, and how to call a waiter, place an order, and ask for the check; oh yeah, and the all important “ganbei!” which serves a clever and crucial role in getting myself and anyone else at dinner mercilessly drunk on baijiu (rice wine). I can also do this rad tongue twister that goes like this: 四是四，十是十， 十四是十四， 四十是四十。 Which translates to 4 is 4, 10 is 10, 14 is 14, 40 is 40. I’m impressed even if you aren’t.

As far as practical skills go, I can order food, yes, but I can’t actually read the menu. When the convenience store clerk asks for ba kaui wu, I know he wants 4.50 yuan, but if I wanted to tell said clerk I thought he missed something, I’d have to foolishly point and gesture at whatever it was until he got the picture; or if all I had to pay with was a 100 kuai note I wouldn’t understand when he told me I needed something smaller. I recognize a few characters, but not enough to read the sign telling me the power in the dorms will be off between 9AM and 6PM tomorrow. Luckily I have kind roommates and helpful friends.

It was partly because of these sumblings that I wanted to spend more time alone. I wanted to try fending for myself and mostly I wanted to feel like an individual again. I wanted the satisfaction of proving my ability to live here on my own, to prove that if I had to I could get by on my own. After four weeks of clinging to my friends to interpret menus for me I was ready to cut the cord and take some control back.

As it turns out I am doing better than I thought. It’s surprisingly easy to get by with pathetic gestures and broken chinese. I get the impression that it’s almost expected that I will know about as much as I do and little more. This gives me some comfort because at least I’m living up to their expectations , but upon further recflection I realise just how high the expectations are for foreigners back home, and ho much lower it is here. Back home there may be a menu in Spanish, and a few chinese joints that have menus written in Chinese but the general sentiment is that if you’re coming to the US, you’re going to communicate with us in English. Surprising for a country with so much diversity, it reinforces my long held conviction that the WASPy majority in the United States deserves absolutely nothing: no pity, special treatments, or any other kind of “helping hand” in the United States.

This is not to suggest that China may not have it’s own problems with its ethnic minorities in relation to the majority population. I have not learned much about the subject, only that China has over 50 ethnic minority groups living peacefully together as one Chinese nation (which fact nearly every student here knows and quickly and energetically recites for me at every opportunity). I am merely making the simple point that it is probably easier for someone who does not know Chinese to live here than someone who doesn’t speak english to live in America.

All of this is coming into focus just as the election is winding down. This American Life ran a story about a week ago now about democrats who can’t justify voting for Barack Obama for the simple fact that he is black. The story was a bit upsetting and I’ll admit I coulnd’t take it all in one listen. Here were voters who were willing to sacrifice their entire political agenda to vote for a white man. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! I lost a lot of faith in America after listening to that show, and then I realized it was October 23, a day that will forever live in infamy for me.

If anyone who knows me has ever wondered where my cynicism comes from, it is from this day. Six years ago on that day Senator Paul Wellstone was killed in a plane crash in northern Minnesota. A part of me died that day when I was sitting in my world geography class, wearing my Wellstone! T-shirt and holding campaign materials related to a massive rally the following Tuesday, and heard the awful news. After the memorial service and the ensuing fallout from Rick Kahn’s eulogy in particular, I became fixated on the negative aspects of American politics. Politics became revolting and uninspiring. Wellstone left a void in the political landscape that I had yet to see filled. 2008 was different. Both candidates for the Presidency were people for whom I had a great deal of respect. The moderation of John McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign combined with his POW experience gave me some sense that McCain was concerned about his country and really wanted to do something about the old school of American politics. David Foster Wallace probably put it best in his profile of McCain for Rolling Stone when he described McCain’s spirit as a politician. Barack Obama looked like a product of the American dream, someone working hard to achieve his dreams. His speech at the 2004 DNC was among the most inspiring political speeches I had heard since Wellstone died two years ago, but the 2000 and 2004 elections on the whole convinced me that American politics was dead. The Bush campaigns’ portrayals of “liberal” ideas as anti-american sent me the message that the United States was closed for business, unless you were already doing business. 2006 six recovered but none of the new leaders from Minnesota or anywhere else were at all inspiring. Attorney General Mike Hatch’s attempt at challenging the Pawlenty administration was a dismal failure, but even worse, it was the third DFL attempt to take back St. Paul that had failed this dismally. It seemed like since 2002 the DFL had lost its ability to put up candidates like Humphrey, Mondale, Wellstone and so many other politicians over the years that were able to captivate voters and instill confidence in American democracy. This year’s election was the first time I felt the passion of Wellstone’s politicophilia on the national stage and the moment I realized this, homesickness set in.

I missed my family for sure, and my friends at school. I’ve been living away from home for the last three years so apart from the distance, it wasn’t much different. I call them through skype instead of on the phone because it’s so much cheaper, and I can’t get in my car to go home, but apart from that missing family and friends back home hasn’t been much different for me. What has been different is all of the connections I had to my life back home. The places I went to, the culture I consumed, my daily routine, all of these fundamental parts of my lifestyle and my identity that I have almost no access to here.

I’ve been worried for a while now about how I would handle being away from Minnesota for four months. I think I probably have a stronger connection to Minneapolis than most students at Gustavus. It isn’t that there are any deeply rooted parts of my childhood in the city; my grandparents lived in Columbia Heights and my Great Grandmother lived the last years of her life in Northeast, and aside from occasional visits I have no failial connection with any part of the cities outside of Burnsville and to some extent Stillwater. I certainly don’t have any urban roots to speak of. It’s more that there is so much to appreciate about Minneapolis. It’s the culture, the arts, and the almost nationalist pride I feel whenever I shop at the Electric Fetus or see an Atmosphere show at First Avenue. I feel a little cooler whenever I see people here using post-it notes because I know that they were serendipidously invented by a 3M employee, and I know what 3M stands for and where it’s corporate headquarters are.

All of that pride mostly disappears when I realize I am the only person here who cares. Why the hell should the Chinese care about where post-it notes come from? Why would someone living in Zhuhai, where iPhones and Black and Decker toasters and a whole plethora of other products much cooler than a sticky piece of yellow paper are manufactured? Why should any of the people here care that I’ve walked on the floor of the club Prince filmed the ending of Purple Rain in, or that I could easily take them on the “Fargo” tour of Minnesota. Suddenly having a signed copy of the new Doomtree album doesn’t seem so cool anymore.

This loss of status, loss of identity makes me even more homesick. I miss 2 for 1s at Liquor Lyle’s, biking the greenway from Uptown to the Mississippi river and the rest of the grand rounds. I miss the lake, the clean air, the parks, the people. All of these things define me back home and none of it has any meaning here. I wear my South Minneapolis t-shirt with pride, but know that most of the students I interact with here have no idea where or what “south Minneapolis is.” Every once in a while I’ll spot a student wit han “I heart duluth”or a Gustavus shirt of some kind of apparel from one of the summer programs UIC sends, and I smile and remind myself that I am going home eventually and somehow that helps.

Music: All music featured in each episode of this podcast is by Minnesota artists with the exception of a few ambient background tracks produced by Nine Inch Nails. This episode features: Subteranean Homesick Blues, Bob Dylan Apple (Instrumental), Atmosphere; Gotta Lotta Walls (Instrumental), Atmosphere; Ghosts II, Nine Inch Nails; Always Coming Back Home To You, Atmosphere; Say Shh, Atmosphere