This American life
06 September 2008. Inspired by moving words.
Image by Mason13a, reproduced on a by-nc-nd licence
I've been silent for a while, because I've not been sure what to write.
Six years ago, I started this blog on the sly while on a quiet day in the office in London. It followed me to Spain (with occasional distractions) and here I am now, listening to the patter of the beginnings of Tropical Storm Hannah while sitting in my new front room in New England.
Welcome to my new life, here in the United States of America - a country whose story begins with a ship and a vision of escaping religious intolerance in England so as to establish religious intolerance over here. I'm now living in the richest, most powerful country in history. And I can't help feeling that I've let people down.
To be frank, some of my friends seem a little disappointed with my move. Back in 2002, I left London with a cry of "Onwards!", on an adventurous one-way trip to Barcelona that lots of people I spoke to wished that they could do themselves (actually you still can, but that's another discussion for another day). My new home had paella, flamenco, sangria, the Mediterranean lifestyle and, as people spoke a different language (or two) out there, they therefore would have new and different insights into how to live life properly. Basically, they did things different over there, and it's sunny. Go me.
America, on the other hand - well, we all know America, whether we've been there or not. Sure, I moved for the best of reasons - giddy, romantic, doe-eyed love, since you ask - but what a shame to have to trade in an adventure in an alien land for George W Bush, Jerry Springer and obesity. My ferocious ambition of six years ago was traded in for an easy life in the land of the LAZ-E Boy. Ah well. Life, eh?
To those of you who even flickered a half-thought along those lines, I completely understand where you're coming from. And you are very, very wrong.
It is, admittedly, hard to admire the USA from afar, especially for middle-class Europeans. Familiarity breeds contempt, and no other culture seems as familiar as that of America, in part because of the lack of a language gap, but also because commercial globalisation has made so much American culture become our own.
Except it hasn't. Just as Heinz tinned spaghetti is not quite what the Italians intended, I'm slowly realising that there's an unfathomably detailed and layered cultural landscape just in New England that is making me pack up my preconceptions in a large box marked "Oops!".
America is a continent of differing ideas, backgrounds, histories, ideologies, landscapes, all held together by a beautiful mythology based on self-belief. This is the country that invented both fast food and Men's Health; the nuclear bomb and the hippie movement; Microsoft and the Amish; the aeroplane and the couch potato. It is the world's biggest polluter and it nearly elected Al Gore. It was, and is, the New World, a bizarre experiment in itself. If a person has an idea, so the story goes, no matter how hare-brained and wacky the idea is, this is the place to pursue it. You can do anything you want to. It's the American Dream.
For all but the lucky few, it is just a dream of course, and a potentially dangerous one. America is, and always has been, a painfully unequal nation. But here's the thing: so is the UK, so is Spain, so is India, so is Australia. It's just that America is extremely good at public self-criticism, and it's much easier to sit in London and laugh at the bittersweet musings of the Daily Show and Michael Moore than to wonder why satire in Britain doesn't really address social complexity and inequality in the same way. Because it's worse out here? Quite probably. Because it has the resources to do something about it, and isn't? More likely. Because America is still seen as having incredible potential, because the dream survives despite all evidence to the contrary, because no other country has shown the same spirit for reinvention and innovation as the USA? Now you're getting it. A man from Hope gets elected as President. A black man uses hope to try and get elected as President. A moosehunter appears from nowhere to be nominated as vice-president. Only in America does that not sound kitsch and corny. Or rather, it does here too - and yet people are still eager to believe it. Atheist or god-fearer, this is a nation that is driven by, and thrives on belief.
And what it believes in above all is opportunity. Potential. It's here if you want it - equality, wealth, happiness, the war can be over. If you have luck on your side, this is the place. And I am incredibly lucky: I am a white male, the most socially accepted demographic around; I can afford the immigration process to get my green card, and I don't have to worry too much about where my next dollar will come from. I'm educated, I have plenty of employment opportunities, I work in communication across media, an industry that continues to expand and grow in all directions. If anything, the scariest part of being here is not realising enough of the endless potential on offer, a potential I firmly believe that I will not find anywhere else in the world. And a big part of the challenge for me is to help expand those opportunities to others. Then we all take a step up.
Maybe I'm being naive. Maybe I've bought into the rhetoric. But I do believe in the possibilities of opportunity, in creativity, in reaching people of all backgrounds with words and images and imagination, telling them stories and changing their lives. I believe in trying, failing, failing better.
I'm here to step out into the void to see if I can fly.
Tell that to a Spaniard and they'll laugh. Tell that to a Brit and they'll reply with cynicism. Tell that to an American and they'll give you a push.
This is the place for adventure and ambition and imagination. This is the place for collaboration and creation and excitement. This is the place where I'm going to forge my own corner of the world, a corner where I do amazing things, where I work with incredible people, where we strive together to change lives for the better. If you're with me, we'll find a way. Get the message out: things are going to start happening.
I'm sorry that you no longer have a sofa in Spain you can crash on. I'm sorry that maybe you'd rather I were living out your imaginary exotic Flamenco-dancing tapas-eating dream life. I'm sorry that you mostly equate America with things that you, along with most Americans, find distasteful, such as militarism and religious extremism and Guantanamo Bay.
I'm not sorry I'm here. It was time for me to move on, and this is a huge step forward. Each day I find myself fascinated by this country that seems to reveal so much of itself at first glance, that seems so loud and brash - and yet hides incongruities and quiet complexity at every turn. And I've arrived here at the most fascinating political crossroads in many a decade. Whatever happens from now on, I've got a front seat.
This is the place, this is the time and this is the opportunity. I can't imagine doing it anywhere else.