Next steps

Come visit my dissertation on this project on http://valueinbetween.wordpress.com

You can also check out my next project as it develops on http://thesilents.wordpress.com

See you there.

Rachel

The day of reckoning

Well, its coming close. The exhibition starts, the day after tomorrow. And as much as I'm scared and not ready, I am super excited about it. So, I'd love to see you and find what you think about it. The exhbition runs from tuesday until friday, and you must reserve a place (the tickets are free). I'd like to see as many people down there as possible, on tuesday the 4th at 3pm, Wed at 5:30 and Friday at 7. email me on r.parish@cssd.ac.uk to reserve tickets, or ring 02077228183 to book.

see you there.

rachel

Beefy Comments

I haven't spent too much time publicising this blog--I really just told friends and family about it. I actually set up the blog, thinking that it would be good to have access to the images wherever I was. But recently, I've gotten a couple comments on my blog, the photos and the thoughts, because of Jett Loe's (http://lettertoamerica.blogs.com) endorsement of my project on his blog about Belfast and from traffic from Erin Parish's blog (http://terrificwhistlers.wordpress.com/).

The comments have been supportive--people seem to like the project. But I would like a bit more, to tell you the truth. The project, in a lot of ways, is about joint definitions--about finding 'truth' through everyday thoughts--through the everday thoughts of many people. So, what I think I should say is: join in this discussion. Let me know where your thoughts fall. Where do you come from, and what do you think of when you think of Americans? Do you want to associate yourself with one of these responses--or do you want to propose a new thought of your own? Give me a Beefy comment.

Reflections

In many ways, I'm as much of a tourist to ideas about America and Americans as people who have never stepped across the pond. While I am generating design concepts for the photo responses, I find I'm pulling from stereotyped images. What do I know about Hollywood? I've had a few friends who work out there, but even their anecdotal information is eclipsed by pictures I've seen in books and on the TV. You can see this knowledge-based-on-stereotype reflected in the photographs as well.

So maybe, what I'm finding, even at this early stage, is that I'm no expert of Americans. But who would be--who can be? I've held for a long time that I am "the quintessential American." Don't get me wrong--I was not raised on a diet of meatloaf and apple pie. And there was such a time that the comment "OH, you're SOOOO American" would have sent shivers down my spine. But the more time I've spent abroad, and the less company I keep with other people from my country, the more I've seen how some basic beliefs and ways of keeping values are dependent on my national origins.

photo responses

I've begun working on my own and with Amy Rogers, Makeup Artiste Extraordinaire to develop and produce images as reflections of the comments made by Londoners. Scroll down to see which ones we have completed.

Wankers

I’ve got a very mixed up accent—part Southern US, part francophone south Louisiana, part Irish and part English—you put it together. When anyone ever comments on it, I usually defend myself--that its not my accent that’s weird, but my vocabulary. In truth, it’s both. But, of course, being away from ‘home’ makes me more interested in claiming that the ways in which my linguistic patterns have changed, have been under my own control. And in some way, a word choice seems more under your control than the way you say your words.

I’m comfortable with wanker. It is a word that I have chosen to adopt. I use it both consciously and as a genuine expletive. It seems to be a kinder way of saying asshole, but always with an undercurrent of humour to it too. Maybe this is because it’s a ridiculous thing to accuse some one with these days. Identifying someone as “one who masturbates” is really an ineffective insult. Everyone does, and this is widely referred to on popular television.

So when this child stood brazenly and replied to Liz asking him, Whats the first thing you think of when you think of Americans? With a resounding “Wanker” I was not at all insulted. I thought, how appropriate. What an English expression, what an English expression, that I have chosen, what an expressive expression, and vapid one as well. I thought, well, that that was enough said.

Burgers

I ABSOLUTELY adore barbecue--no, I'll take it further, I love meat. I have been known to wax on and on about how to treat a piece of chicken with love and respect while you season it, before cooking, and to insist that you will only get the best flavour from an experience of mutual respect between you and your food. It was, in fact, this immense appreciation of meat that led me to give it up for six years. I realised, that perhaps its actually limiting to love something too much. Perhaps, when we have something we want too readily, we begin to take it for granted, and treat it too lightly.

Consider this: while I am no stranger to fantastically cooked food--including great cuts of meat cooked to gourmet standards--for the first two years after I gave up meat, I dreamed of Wendy's spicy chicken sandwiches. Why was that? Why had the spicy chicken sandwich become emblematic of my sacrifice, rather than a beautiful fillet steak?

I think there could be a connection between taking food for granted and the popularity of fast food. If we think that we can have a great steak when we have time, we will treat ourselves to a fast food Hamburger to tide us over. Pretty soon, with hectic lives, we may find ourselves more familiar with the Hamburger or chicken burger than we think.

I love Americans--They make life easy

"Invention is the mother of necessity." --Thorstein Veblen

How did we ever get along without the internet? Or mobile phones? Or cars for that matter? They make life so much more manageable--or so it seems. Then you hear tell of things like that the average speed of travel in cities has not changed over the past hundred years. What do all of these inventions and time saving devices do for our quality of life? Sure, we're able to work from home, and we can wiki anything, but has this made life easier? I'm not convinced.

But just couse i'm not convinced, doesn't mean that I'd rather not have them.

Trying to Control Everything

The truth is undeniable.

I once had to make up a bed for guests coming over to stay. I was very busy and trying to get things done quickly. I had one fitted bed sheet and one bed to dress with a fitted bed sheet. There was no other way. One problem: the bed was a queen sized bed, the sheet was full sized. I could say that I did not know this before spending twenty minutes wrestling with the two inanimate opponents, but that would be a denial of truth. In spite of this, I was determined to make that bed sheet do what I needed it to do—to be something that it was not—and to actually fit the bed. I was so convinced that I could control this impossible situation, that I flung myself from one side to the other of the bed, using feet and hands, lifting and bending the mattress with a surprising amount of force, for twenty full minutes.

Did the bed get made in that way? No. Did this prove a disaster? No, of course not. I was left, at the end of it all, gasping and laughing, sprawled over an unmade bed, tangled in a much abused sheet. I honestly don’t remember the outcome of this episode—how the bed got made, if I told the guests of the hilarity that had emerged from arranging a place for them to sleep. I do vividly remember the episode. And any time that I find myself trying to control an impossible situation, I can see the doomed white elastic on the edge of the beige sheet, I can feel myself staring down the folds of the mattress fabric like a cowboy with his fingers dancing around his holster, I can sense that determination, and I await the flying failure, and, of course the laughter.

Nice

Nice is one of those words that completely depends on context, isn’t it? Most people think of being nice as a good thing, but with the right intonation, and appropriately placed pauses in the cadence of the delivery, being called nice can be a huge insult. The word itself is innocuous—it hedges bets, it fails to take a stand, and sits on the fence. It is very, very, civilized.

And I say that because I’m thinking about Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents. I first read that small book, when I was about 19. I was in the back of the car with my family, travelling the 12 hours back from Georgia to Louisiana to see my grandparents for Christmas. As I sat cramped, seatbelt cutting into me, needing to pee, I read Freud’s thoughts about how we have to do things that are against our natural instincts, in order to live a safe and, ultimately, better life. I found a lot of truth in that.

Freud points out that it is all a balance—a balance between our instinctive drives and our need to be social creatures, ultimately leading us to living on a fence, and maybe therefore, to being nice. So, I wonder if the way that we are nice to each other—I wonder, is this as context sensitive as the word itself? Can our nice actions be just as cutting as they can be kind?

Funny

My boyfriend often tells me, “you’ve got the funniest head.” I think this is because you can read anything that I’m thinking in my face—a quality that is both a joy and at times a recipe for disaster. It is difficult for me to conceal my thoughts, because they’re legible on my face, usually before I even know what I’m thinking. So, I’m often caught out, “saying” something that other people normally would not. Is that what makes funny, funny? That someone is out on the line? I think about stand up comics and the different routes they take to be funny: They often pull people out of the audience and put them on the spot with personal questions or comments. This makes people laugh, because someone is caught out—is put out on the line, and exposed to public scrutiny. And in that public scrutiny, a single person’s thoughts or actions, bumbles and mistakes, can stand for things that everyone else has thought or done before, but wouldn’t want to admit aloud. Is being funny just a revelation of our humanity?

George Bush, I'm sorry to say

Confusion is the main sentiment I feel about George Bush, and what has happened with US federal politics over the past seven years. The shambles of the first election, 911, bombings, war, the economy the second elections, Katrina—its just all surreal, or hyper real or something other than straightforward real life.

Its predictable to think about George Bush and think about his powerful political actions. But he is just a man, isn’t he? But even thinking on his humanity, I’m utterly confused by this man—by what he stands for, by who he could possibly be, by his actions and what thoughts his actions can possibly ascribe to him. I did a project that involved going around in different countries and vox popping people with a few questions, based around the one simple one: what does it mean to be a good human being? And the resounding consensus between people everywhere seemed to be that, no matter what your definition of good, people think that other people try to be good. The question to answer here is, however, what is good to George Bush?

I don’t know that this will ever become clear, or legible. I wonder, however, what will happen in the ensuing years, to the average citizen’s reality of politics in the US? Will the dream like, surreal state of affairs continue to spread more and more thickly over our lives, or will the veil be lifted? And even more frightening may be, if the latter happens, what will we find to be revealed as reality?

Fat and Fast Food

FAT
Not to be funny, but this is a big topic. What with rising levels of obesity and size zero models wasting away, famine and starvation, and problems with waste disposal from grocery stores, sometimes making headline news together on the same day, I’d say it’s a big fat subject to think on. Maybe even too big for me to tackle head on, in all its glory and splendour.

I’ll take the personal route. When I was younger, I didn’t mind about my weight—I was never what people would call fat, but I wasn’t a hottie either. And I just didn’t mind. But about when I turned 20, I started caring, and being bothered by my physical imperfections. And I could recognize a pattern: the happier I was, the thinner I would become, and the more unhappy times corresponded to a gain in weight. I do believe that the relationship went in this direction, rather than the opposite, and it was not a shift in weight that triggered a change in emotional wellbeing, but the correlation is there.

The physical and the mental are so intricately linked. So its no surprise that if we feel good we look good, and vice versa. We have so many distractions in our lives, however, that sometimes its difficult to tell if we feel good, or look good—even if that’s our main pursuit—until it becomes glaringly obvious. Maybe the lesson is that if we would slow down—slow down our lives, our thoughts, our goals, our eating, or drinking, then we might be able to find the right sized life, and body, for ourselves.

Friendly, Outgoing, Easygoing people

Friendly

I was sitting outside with my parents at Acapulco’s Mexican restaurant in downtown Macon, Georgia. A man walked by and asked, “how ya’ll doing today?” He didn’t know us from Adam, but still he stopped, and waited to hear our response. I had been living in London for several years at this point, and I was home for a short visit. Aftera brief, pleasant conversation, I asked my parents—do you know him? The moment I asked this question, I was surprised by myself. It was obvious that they didn’t, but why had his easy, friendly manner struck me as strange? This is the way people are where I grew up—they are friendly, outgoing, easygoing people who take a passing interest in people in their environment.

Sex and the City

How does television create and skew our views of what life is like? While I sit here, writing my reflections, I have thought, now and again, that they sound a bit like pieces that Carrie from Sex and the City might narrate over the course of her show. They’re just short, personal essays on a particular topic, the like of which you could read in many magazines. Also, exactly the sort of piece that weaves together the stories in her TV show. So why is it that when I hear my voice writing these pieces, I find my voice can sometimes sound a bit like hers.

The average salary that people in the States make is 16,000 dollars per year, and the most typical job American’s have is that of a Cashier. But if you look at the television that broadcasts American culture all over the world, you would be hard pressed to find anyone that would represent that demographic, save a high school student with a part time job. We’re definitely not all easy breezy journalists, high flying advertising agents or upper middle class housewives.

People outside of the states are often really surprised if you bring up poverty in the States. That’s hardly surprising however—those images don’t travel overseas—they don’t come through the airwaves or the cathode tubes, and the many images that do, are far more eye catching and fun to watch than those of real life.

Large

A few years ago I drove around the states with my Irish boyfriend, James. He had been living in the states with me for a couple of years by that time, was fairly acclimatised to the relative distances between places as compared to those you might find here. But as we set out on the first week of our trip, he was adamant that we would leisurely get to Albuquerque, New Mexico in about three days from Georgia. After the third day, we might have been about halfway there. The size of the country, even to people who know it well, is a difficult thing to really accept, or even to just understand.

This is not just a stumbling block for people who want to drive around the country. I believe that the sheer size of the country can make people feel cut off from the unity of the country—from the very things that many people overseas see as the essence of Americans. I think that the size of the country helps to allow Americans to be cut off from its federal government and the federal government from its constituent citizens. The scales are too large—often much larger than we think.

McDonalds

There’s a McDonalds in the hospital in downtown Macon where I grew up. After school on Fridays, a couple friends and I would walk there after school, get ice cream sundaes and French fries and shoot the breeze, dream about the future and laugh about the past. Sounds like a proper commercial, doesn’t it? Well, except for it being in the hospital and all, with the pregnant women sitting in the smoking room for fag after fag, right next to us. That’s the deal with symbols, or simulacra, or whatever McDonalds is: what they stand for is true on one side, and just as real on the other.

Mass Produced

I was amazed when I learned about the job of an industrial designer. I had never before thought about who designed egg cartons or sets of forks you could buy at Kmart, or run of the mill flashlights. I was so used to seeing products packaged in supermarkets and sets of objects in department stores, that it didn’t even occur to me that their design was given any consideration.

Rubbish

This is probably the one response that really took me aback. The woman who said this comment, did so with such a sweet voice and a smile, that it took me a few moments to compute actually what the word was that had come out of her mouth. My approach in this project has been to try to detach myself from passing judgement on people’s thoughts, I avoided putting any overt political spin on soliciting answers, and in my responses, I’ve tried to reflect on where the truth of these stereotypes can be found on me and in my own life or experiences. So, I turn my thoughts to Rubbish, and I can’t help but feeling a bit angry. And defensive. How am I like something to be disposed of? How am I like waste product?

I’ll turn my attention to two of the body’s waste products: my hair and nails. Although both hair and nails have very valuable functions, they are essentially one way the body gets rid of waste. If you think about that, it becomes comical to think of how much time and money people spend on beautifying their natural waste. Now, we can question if spending energy on transforming something that is essentially rubbish is necessary, because it is fundamentally repulsive, or, if taking an alternative look at waste can actually transform it into something with great value. So I guess we can say that one woman’s rubbish is another person’s pride and joy.

The Drawl. Dodge City. Stirrups.

White people

White People


The issue, and even the concept of race and heritage, is incredibly muddled in the US. You can go about explaining it away—theres more than enough to debate about the generation-lasting psychological effects of a diverse set of immigrants driving out a population and setting in often unfriendly terrain. That’s not to mention putting slavery in the mix. But however interesting the causes of why people in the states often claim their distant heritages as their own may be, the fact of the matter is that this is one trait that unites the United States. African-Americans, Irish-Americans, Japanese-, Asian-, Hispanic-Americans, the hyphenated list goes on and on. What this seems to point to is a drive to identify and distinguish yourself within a larger group, combined with a search for individuality.

OK--I like George Bush

I don't like them very much, but for historical reasons

What can that possibly mean? I’m not an apologist at for the US government and its foreign policies at all, but the phrasing of this particular response definitely threw me for a loop. And I really found this comment a rather humorous one. The first thing that came to my mind was the thought of the Boston tea party. Could he still be sore about that—I mean--can anyone really hold a grudge for that long?

Much is made about the “special relationship” between the US and the UK leaders since Churchill and Roosevelt, but we don’t often think about the post-colonial nature of this relationship. I wonder, how much has this informed the way we interact? How much of the past is still in our present?

Food

Writing these pieces, I have found myself reflecting quite a bit on food—fast food, burgers, etc. I always start by thinking about how much food means to me—about how much I appreciate it and how much I use it. Food is both a joy and a refuge for me. I eat to share company and I eat to distract myself from stressful situations. I remember one Christmas time, there were a couple of really difficult things happening in my family. I sat and ate tub after tub of a mayonnaise based salmon dip, to distract myself from what was going on. When my friend Bruce recently died, I was a bit more lucky in that there were two big bags of grapes right in front of me instead of salmon dip. The grapes were gone in a matter of minutes. The relationship between a person and food consumption is both fundamental and highly cultivated. I live in testament to this.

My Mother

My mother

The miracle of life. How simply awesome, that we can actually make other people? And a mother, she holds a group of cells in her body as they divide and grow and develop into another living being. It is simply incomprehensible—of course explainable—but incomprehensible jus the same. I like to think that the revered place that we give to our parents is something that goes without question, as we get older, and as they do too.

I think we’ve moved away from this, however. I’m afraid sometimes that we’ve moved away from our humanity, in search of civilization. Its very difficult to be aware of the very miracle of our existence, and to appreciate what every person’s mother has given them, when you’re running from the 255 to the 88 bus, with just enough time to catch the train from the junction to, well, you get it. Where is the place for reverence in city life today? Where is your place for reflection, and for appreciating how amazing it is to be alive? I’m really not sure for myself. I used to have a sense of it. Maybe I left it in a seat on the number 88.

Friendly

Fat

Not to be funny, but this is a big topic. What with rising levels of obesity and size zero models wasting away, famine and starvation, and problems with waste disposal from grocery stores, sometimes making headline news together on the same day, I’d say it’s a big fat subject to think on. Maybe even too big for me to tackle head on, in all its glory and splendour.

I’ll take the personal route. When I was younger, I didn’t mind about my weight—I was never what people would call fat, but I wasn’t a hottie either. And I just didn’t mind. But about when I turned 20, I started caring, and being bothered by my physical imperfections. And I could recognize a pattern: the happier I was, the thinner I would become, and the more unhappy times corresponded to a gain in weight. I do believe that the relationship went in this direction, rather than the opposite, and it was not a shift in weight that triggered a change in emotional wellbeing, but the correlation is there.

The physical and the mental are so intricately linked. So its no surprise that if we feel good we look good, and vice versa. We have so many distractions in our lives, however, that sometimes its difficult to tell if we feel good, or look good—even if that’s our main pursuit—until it becomes glaringly obvious. Maybe the lesson is that if we would slow down—slow down our lives, our thoughts, our goals, our eating, or drinking, then we might be able to find the right sized life, and body, for ourselves.

Fast Food

I spent a bit of time in Gabon in West Africa. I remember watching groups of women crouched down in front of a huge pot on an open fire, for what seemed like the entire day, cooking a stew of fish and greens and manioc. There were always several “chefs” and “souschefs” all working together to prepare the day’s meal. Everyone was part of an extended family as well, and this was a daily routine. If they were alone, they would never be able to make meals—they relied on each other to prepare sustenance.

When I think about fast food, I think about this ritual as the antithesis of fast food. What do we rely on for sustenance: Marks and Spencer’s meals for one? A number four at KFC? Fast food is something that you often get on the fly, or on your own. You often even order it through a loudspeaker or over the phone. It is fundamentally a solitary experience. I wonder if the predominance of fast food being the rule in many of our lives, rather than the exception, comes from being independent, and self-sufficent. Lord knows that I’m glad that I don’t have to crouch around a fire all day, every day, for the rest of my life. But I also think its important, at the same time as we realise how free we are, to think about the virtues and vices of what has replaced our alternatives.

Burgers

I ABSOLUTELY adore barbecue--no, I'll take it further, I love meat. I have been known to wax on and on about how to treat a piece of chicken with love and respect while you season it, before cooking, and to insist that you will only get the best flavour from an experience of mutual respect between you and your food. It was, in fact, this immense appreciation of meat that led me to give it up for six years. I realised, that perhaps its actually limiting to love something too much. Perhaps, when we have something we want too readily, we begin to take it for granted, and treat it too lightly.

Consider this: while I am no stranger to fantastically cooked food--including great cuts of meat cooked to gourmet standards--for the first two years after I gave up meat, I dreamed of Wendy's spicy chicken sandwiches. Why was that? Why had the spicy chicken sandwich become emblematic of my sacrifice, rather than a beautiful fillet steak?

I think there could be a connection between taking food for granted and the popularity of fast food. If we think that we can have a great steak when we have time, we will treat ourselves to a fast food Hamburger to tide us over. Pretty soon, with hectic lives, we may find ourselves more familiar with the Hamburger or chicken burger than we think.

George Bush

Civilized, Bold, the Same as England

Civilized, the same as England

When I think of England and Civilization, I think of colonial officers in Africa, in khaki suits, with huge elephant guns. Or ladies, travelling through India, with many servants, bringing around a bit of English land everywhere with them so as to have tea on English soil every day. I think that inherent to the concept of civilization is an act of putting other people beneath you, so as to comparatively elevate yourself. We feel more civilized when we know things that others don’t, when we have people serving us.

Good Suntans

The Iraq War

The iraq War

I was travelling through Charles de Gaulle airport right after the Iraq war started. This was also the time that the SARS scare was breaking out. My flight had been cancelled, and even though I had confirmed my ticket less than 24 hours prior, the people at Air France did not make an effort to put me on a flight as soon as possible. I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t getting on one of the many flights as they continued to leave the ground, as the hours rolled past, and they kept cancelling my seats on upcoming flights, one after another. I finally went to ask someone why I couldn’t be placed onto one of these flights. The response came curtly, from behind a white medical mask that was a standard issue for all Air France workers at that time, that I did not need an explanation as to why I was being bumped, because I am American, and the reason flights were being re-arranged was because of the Iraq war, for which, by the way, I was personally responsible.

Naturally, I was shocked. And I felt alone and isolated. What did I have to do with the Iraq war? I didn’t vote for this administration. I did not support the war. I had no part in it. Yet, because of it, I felt alone, and scared, and abused. And I imagine, that those feelings that I had, are the same feelings, mine being comparatively on a painfully microscopic scale, that another young woman in Iraq would be feeling at the same moment as me. And I wonder if there is any connection between people in the world who are feeling the same things at the same time. Are we all interrelated, truly? Can the world be thought of as a whole, living being, and we as only some of its constituent parts—like cells or organs that make it up?

Immaturity

Immaturity.
I think that everyone feels immature at times, or at least we all act immature at times. Sometimes we even wish we could be more immature, maybe without recognising that thats what we could really use most. If we catch ourselves being immature it can reminds us that we are not above reproach. Because we're not. No one is.

Obviously from the photos, which were incredibly fun to compose, I thought about Goldilocks as an icon of immaturity. What was that girl thinking? "Oh, I'll just climb into someone else's house and use up their possessions and just make myself at home and feel affronted when things aren't the way I'd have it!" Sounds a bit like foreign policy...

But she is just human, isn't she? And thats where the story can instruct us. She comes off as the baddie, and the bears come off as the goodies. In another light, we can look at the tale of Goldilocks as a reminder that we're going to do things wrong. We might have innocent intentions and we may appear to be goodness embodied, but the choices we make do have consequences, both for ourselves and the lives of others.

Overweight

OVERWEIGHT

I think that feeling overweight is an interesting phenomenon in terms of how your mind and your body are communicating. Some people who are technically well over their ideal body mass index, don’t feel overweight at all, whereas many people within a good weight range for their body size battle constantly with feeling that they are too fat. If you genuinely believe that you look good, then your mental state can override many of your physical signs that contradict your beliefs. And if your mind tells you there is something wrong with your physical body, then you can seem to yourself to be overweight when you’re not.

Teeth

Without orthodontics, I would have had teeth growing out of the middle of my mouth. I can't remember how many baby teeth I had pulled, but it was a lot. I've also had eight permanent teeth removed, before I could get braces. Even with this, I loved going to the dentist.

There is something heavenly about having freshly, and professionally, cleaned teeth. This was instilled in me from an early age. Any Americans remember the Smile Van? I've explained this to people in other countries, having never thought about how odd it might sound. "All the children in a school, grade by grade, class by class, line up outside of the school and go one by one into a van where there are two people inside, and a sink. Then, they give you a red tablet to chew and check your teeth. They watch you brush your teeth again, and then send you back out after another inspection." It sounds Orwellian, but it was always fun! And, it did instill in my mind that there was always more to be cleaned--even when you thought the job was done, the red tabs always would show a few points for improvement. Going to the dentist for a cleaning was the surest way that this job would be done to perfection.

I haven't been to a dentist since I've moved to London.

Global Domination

Global Domination

Global domination sounds like something that you try to do in a video game. And it seems a perfectly reasonable pursuit when the people and places you’re trying to dominate are actually systems of ones and zeros. How different do you think average people seem, thought, especially ones in far off lands, to ones and zeros, in the eyes of some powerful political leaders? At times, it seems as though the difference is merely semiotic.