The World is Flat Footed.
I'm in Norway, near the top of the world, and experiencing the sort of dissonance that William Gibson does such a good job of describing in his interesting book Pattern Recognition. The protagonist of that novel is a young woman who flies from global city to global city, and spends a lot of the book getting over jet lag and the feeling that she's in some bizarre mirror world, where people are the same as in her own world but somehow reversed, so they, for instance, drive on the wrong side of the road. I've been here for two months, and so have no jet lag to speak of, but the endless days cultivate the same feeling. The sun goes down between 10 and 11, but it doesn't go far enough down. It just tucks itself under the western horizon, then rolls around the northern horizon until it pops up again in the east. There's always light in the sky. I go to bed around 1 am and it still feels like sunset. Or sunrise.
Then there's the mirror world thing. This is mostly cultural. So, for instance, all the pop music is in English. It's festival season here, and there's free outdoor music most evenings, and good bands playing. The crowds are similar to the ones you'd see at similar events in cities of similar size in the States--middle-aged with a smattering of kids at the jazz events; high schoolers, university students, and young adults and the rock shows; old farts (and younger prefarts) at the classical music. So while the music is going you could be in Urbana or Madison or Austin. Then the music stops and someone starts talking Norsk, which I can only vanishingly decipher. Everyone except the youngest children can also speak English, however. So in the middle of a monolog, you'll get an effortless code switch.
The TV even more so. Last night we tuned in Jeopardy on a Swedish station--same set, same format, but Swedes. Repurposed pop culture is everywhere, but more usual still is unaltered imported product.
So the other night this touched close to home twice in a row. First, the original Ocean's 11 was on one of the Norwegian national channels. I have a personal connection to that movie, because a relative of mine is in it. Not much of a role, though. He is in a teller's booth next to the one that Frank Sinatra uses. My uncle Emil, aka Jelly, Wehby was a minor mob player who befriended the rat pack on stops to the Beverly Hills dinner club in northern Kentucky. He also ran money to Vegas. So on one of his trips he crashed the set of Ocean's 11, and they stuck him in the picture. For half a second.
After Ocean's 11, it was still light out so we stayed up and watched a rerun of Seinfeld. Again, a personal connection. It was the episode in which Jerry and his current girlfriend make out during Schindler's List. At the end of the episode, her father confronts and berates Jerry. The actor playing the father--he died a few years ago--was married to my wife's father's third wife and was the stepfather to our two half-sisters. I met him only once, but saw him on screen many times.
In the mediasphere these fleeting connections repeat over and over everywhere in the world. I recall watching Isabella Rosselini on a talk show one time recounting how she tried to explain to her five year old daughter that she has a famous grandmother. 'She was in movies. Let's see if any are on now.' And when she flipped on the tv, sure enough, there was a scene from an Ingrid Bergman movie. Now we can't all be Isabella Rosselini. And we can't all be Jelly Wehby. But step back just one more step, and there we are, wherever we may be.
I'm in Norway, near the top of the world, and experiencing the sort of dissonance that William Gibson does such a good job of describing in his interesting book Pattern Recognition. The protagonist of that novel is a young woman who flies from global city to global city, and spends a lot of the book getting over jet lag and the feeling that she's in some bizarre mirror world, where people are the same as in her own world but somehow reversed, so they, for instance, drive on the wrong side of the road. I've been here for two months, and so have no jet lag to speak of, but the endless days cultivate the same feeling. The sun goes down between 10 and 11, but it doesn't go far enough down. It just tucks itself under the western horizon, then rolls around the northern horizon until it pops up again in the east. There's always light in the sky. I go to bed around 1 am and it still feels like sunset. Or sunrise.
Then there's the mirror world thing. This is mostly cultural. So, for instance, all the pop music is in English. It's festival season here, and there's free outdoor music most evenings, and good bands playing. The crowds are similar to the ones you'd see at similar events in cities of similar size in the States--middle-aged with a smattering of kids at the jazz events; high schoolers, university students, and young adults and the rock shows; old farts (and younger prefarts) at the classical music. So while the music is going you could be in Urbana or Madison or Austin. Then the music stops and someone starts talking Norsk, which I can only vanishingly decipher. Everyone except the youngest children can also speak English, however. So in the middle of a monolog, you'll get an effortless code switch.
The TV even more so. Last night we tuned in Jeopardy on a Swedish station--same set, same format, but Swedes. Repurposed pop culture is everywhere, but more usual still is unaltered imported product.
So the other night this touched close to home twice in a row. First, the original Ocean's 11 was on one of the Norwegian national channels. I have a personal connection to that movie, because a relative of mine is in it. Not much of a role, though. He is in a teller's booth next to the one that Frank Sinatra uses. My uncle Emil, aka Jelly, Wehby was a minor mob player who befriended the rat pack on stops to the Beverly Hills dinner club in northern Kentucky. He also ran money to Vegas. So on one of his trips he crashed the set of Ocean's 11, and they stuck him in the picture. For half a second.
After Ocean's 11, it was still light out so we stayed up and watched a rerun of Seinfeld. Again, a personal connection. It was the episode in which Jerry and his current girlfriend make out during Schindler's List. At the end of the episode, her father confronts and berates Jerry. The actor playing the father--he died a few years ago--was married to my wife's father's third wife and was the stepfather to our two half-sisters. I met him only once, but saw him on screen many times.
In the mediasphere these fleeting connections repeat over and over everywhere in the world. I recall watching Isabella Rosselini on a talk show one time recounting how she tried to explain to her five year old daughter that she has a famous grandmother. 'She was in movies. Let's see if any are on now.' And when she flipped on the tv, sure enough, there was a scene from an Ingrid Bergman movie. Now we can't all be Isabella Rosselini. And we can't all be Jelly Wehby. But step back just one more step, and there we are, wherever we may be.
posted by jnerone at 3:14 AM
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