For the apathetic, the news is
broadcast in a foreign language. It
sounds like English, one understands the individual words, but as a whole, the
discourse of the broadcasters, journalists, and pundits is utterly
incomprehensible. I used to be a member of this listless mob, pretending the
world didn’t exist outside of my small, cozy, familiar sphere. On the rare occasions where I felt particularly
worldly, I would catch a clip of current events, only to be washed with an
overwhelming feeling of disappointment and helplessness and return to my
previous comatose subjection to the tube.
I didn’t care. I couldn’t. I’d never been able to make up my mind or formulate
opinions about the controversial subjects that prompt clear, impassioned
partisanship and dominate government; who was I to make those momentous decisions?
I was lost in the disinterested void of society. But I was only one of many so it didn’t
really matter; it was the job of others to change the world.
Disguised on the comedy network as
a parody of news-broadcasting culture, Jon Stewart decoded the babble that was
the news and woke me from my apathetic coma.
The awakening wasn’t immediate.
Blinking the sleep from my eyes, I laughed along with the hyperbolic mocking,
sarcasm, and accusation inversion, but there was something more to the jokes,
an unnerving sense of reality, an idea of apparent blemishes on our society that
few have the initiative to look for and fewer the willingness to see. I had believed in the fixed state of society,
but he was poking holes in the system.
What I believed was inalterable, he deemed unfit and ripe for
fundamental modifications. He appealed
for citizen participation in a system dependent on social input and indignant
demand for a government benefitting all tiers of society; though it didn’t
appear that way. It was an extremely clever front.
Comedy was his cloak and awareness
his mantra. Stewart’s comical charade
occupied the front defenses of my mind, allowing his true intent, analysis and
reason, to flank the unsuspecting legions and take hold of the fortress. Other news channels’ tactics were much less
effective, merely assaulting the center, the strongest point in the line of
defense, by bombarding with partisan-tainted-passions and out of context facts,
ignoring my virtually indestructible wall of indifference. Comedy skirts this wall and ingrains the
broader concepts in the naïve audience. As
a persuasive army, laughter is irrefutably more efficient than any combination
of ethos, pathos, or logos could ever be.
As a language, comedy is universally understood, regardless of insight,
passion, or predisposition towards the world.
While avoiding an anarchist label,
Stewart calls for the questioning of authority and banishment of indifference. Our government was built to be inherently
changeable, but it takes initiative and passion to mold. He calls for attention to a lethargic society,
to awaken the populous and impact an imperfect world. As an awake and animated citizen, I can make
an impact. Instead of being engulfed
with despair from societal imperfections, I feel empowered. I do care.
I want to learn the language of the news, to decipher the worldly
significance of current events. I can
make decisions on the controversies that politicians run on and define the laws
which I will have to live by. I am one
of many. But everyone is one of many,
and together we are immense. Together,
it is our job to change the world.
For as much of the stuff as I consume, I should really know more about wine...but isn't that label just beautiful?
I must confess. Est-ce que je peux avoir confiance en vous? I'm a fake. To me, almost all wine is the same. I cannot pick out the lingering smoke, the burst of pencil shavings or dirt (yes, all actually used to describe a wine, no, I do not know what dirt tastes like, thanks).
I guess I classify wines like tax brackets. <$10: wanna get drunk with friends who don't appreciate wine. $10-$15: very hidden gems, but I like the chase (and the price). $15-$25: oh you fancy, huh. $25-$50: showing off. $50-$100: ouais, je comprends maintenant... $100-$175: ich kann das nicht glauben. +$175: yep, all the same again.
In all honesty, I pick the label, not the wine. Sure I know my preferred région, but what would really make my 1€ pasta, canned tomato sauce, out of season salad, and half a delicious bannette look even better? Tonight, it was the vintage 2010 Château VERNOU. A splurge at 8.95€ .
A whole more than the sum of its parts.
It's hard to say if any intern really knows their place when thrust into the real world. Sometimes I feel like a secretary. Sometimes like a burden. Others like the missing puzzle piece needed to complete a project. You know, intern life.
At my stage I have fallen into the role of translator and editor. Anything english, send it my way.
Originally I balked at the idea. I didn't want to be a machine, converting other peoples' ideas. I want to be the person creating ideas. But I'm an intern. It definitely beats photocopying.
What I didn't realize about translation is it isn't always possible. Some ideas will never be transmitted from one language to another. At least not in the unique, beautiful, nuanced way it is communicated in the original language. Language is a cultural artifact. Not just a means by which to transmit ideas, but an idea worth exploring in itself. Many english words you can say with a french accent and voilà, c'est français! But it's not. It is and it isn't the same. Each word is colored by history, by the culture in which it is spoken. While there might be an equivalent "translation," there isn't really. The structure of a sentence often determines the most important part. Yes, what is most important to the sentence, but also what is most important to the speaker (and in effect the native listener). But the same structure is often impossible when it comes to the important things. Even as a second language speaker, translating into my langue maternale, I will understand the original text but be at a complete loss for the subsequent translation. It is impossible to recreate the exact same sense, the nuance and rhythm and heartbeat of a text that fait vivre the ideas of the human behind it. Where the ideas are the soul the text is the flesh.
Maybe I take too much agency from the speaker. You can have ideas without a text, without the tool, but no one will ever know them. In turn we learn to shape our ideas through these tools, and learn to how to use these tools to express our ideas. But where one language expresses certain ideas beautifully, it falls quite short with others. Language shapes humor and severity. It shapes love and heartbreak. Some delicately perform descriptions while others march through time with combinations of verbs impossible d'ailleurs. Sometimes the causitive requires auxilary. Sometimes it's a conjugation or a pronoun placement or preposition or sometimes it doesn't exist. Transitive v. intransitive v. ditransitive. Yes there is another way to evoke the intention, but it is never the same. Consumers responsabilisent davantage translators much more than they know.
Exact translation is impossible. That's why I began learning other languages. Because I wanted to understand exactly what people in the world were saying. I didn't want to rely on a filter, especially now that I know just how much is left out, just how much I am missing by not speaking the language.
Die Residenz, in the heart of Munich, was home to the Bavarian royal family. In itself German has dialects which are often mutually unintelligible. Wandering the many halls dedicated to visiting heads of state, I wonder just how much went wrong in the world simply from miscommunication.
4 years old: artist
5 years old: doctor
6 years: movie star
7 years: lawyer. Mom does it, I can too.
8: nah, doctor's better.
8 1/2: Sick people are gross. Actress.
13: Actress. Glitz. Glamor. Good.
17: Social Worker. Who can really be content with being content?
18: Actress, social work on the side.
It was just part of my plan. I was going to be an actress. I was going to be famous. And last spring I realized it wasn't going to happen.
Until last spring I was working towards a theatre degree. Not particularly a university renown for their arts programs, but hey, it's where I'm at. Disenchantment is heartbreaking.
I had entered as eine begierige Studierende, but my dreams of glamor and fame were becoming ever distant while the realities of the life of an artist and
the chew-you-up-and-spit-you-out industry were increasingly daunting. I was realizing that I had fallen in love
with the idea of acting and life at the top rather than the art of
theatre. I was devastated; surrounded by
people who had theatre dans leur sang, whose enthusiasm would feed them when their
paycheck wouldn’t, I felt like an impostor.
I wanted so badly to be as passionate as my peers, but their love for
the art only made my own indifference and shallow dreams more evident.
When I voiced my discontent I met an unexpected response. These artists were my friends, my family, but I was the misfit, die Ausgestoßene. Many couldn't understand why I was unhappy, why I was interested in pursuing something else. I felt almost like a turncoat, a deserter, sure to face my execution if I ever looked back.
But once I acknowledged this decision was real, that I just couldn't pretend anymore that I actually enjoyed the overdramatic comedies I was just not cut out for, that I was not in the right place for the work I wanted to do, I was left with more than non-understanding peers. J'étais sans un rêve.
I was passionless. Food was tasteless. Music monotonous. Company grew tiresome and dark. It was the first time in my life I didn't have a dream. Un mode de vie. I was full of ambition but no compass to direct it. I missed having a target, not necessarily what the target was, but just having it. Something to give every ounce of my sweat and blood to. Something bigger than myself. Wine helped for a while. Not much, but it helped to fall asleep where I could have real dreams again.
Eventually I realized there might be an explanation for why I had taken 20+ hours over my university's language requirements, that when you do something for no reason doesn't mean there isn't a reason.
Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I still think about acting. Some part of me still believes that sparkling life will be mine.
But today I made banana pancakes without baking soda, baking powder or vanilla (I guess since there is a boulangerie around every corner, people in France don't bake). Incredibly average. Nutella makes them better. A sad reminder that not all seemingly good ideas come to fruition, even under good intentions.
4 o'clock on a Tuesday. And a Wednesday. And a Thursday. At 4 o'clock in Munich something happens to me. I need a glass of wine (or two, lets be serious) and a slice of cheesecake. But not any cheesecake. German cheesecake. German chocolate cake is a fraud covered in suffocating paste. I never liked cheesecake until Germany. It's at the same time lighter, creamier, full of spirit to leave you skipping through the platz.
After fully embracing the tourist spirit and meticulously examining the preserved history in the Bavarian capital, my feet hurt. My brain hurt. Die Residenz was beautiful but my shoulder ached from holding the audio guide to my ear while wandering the endless reconstructed corridors. I needed a break and a bathroom. Marienplatz was close to my U-bahn stop, plenty of sidewalk cafés, good as any. The french prend une verre at just about any time, so can I.
I sat toute seule at the first café I walked by with a decent sideways view of the glockenspiel. Almost at the hour, maybe I'd see it play, but who knew when it really would, and the square was too full of life to actually hear.
Having only arrived in Germany, my brain was still in French mode. When the waitress came by the only german words I could muster were 'red wine' and 'cake'. Quite confused by the fact that I wasn't concerned with what type of cake (I had been too intimidated by the language and culture barrier earlier in the day to stop and attempt the feat in which I was now engaged, so I hadn't eaten and just needed something so the wine wouldn't go straight to my head, I didn't care what type of cake, just calories bitte) she was about to walk away when I mustered up the only type of cake I could remember: käsekuche. Ein stück käsekuche bitte.
After spending a day alone wandering a foreign city, there's an unmatched camaraderie at european cafés. It's okay to be alone here, because you're not really alone. Fellow wanderers gather. Some in groups, big and small. Some residents. Some tourists. Students. Enthusiasts. Lovers. Artists. Fonnctionaires. Lycéens. Businessmen. Mères au foyer. But all in the same place for a short time. In the museums, pressed to the walls by the crowds, I felt alone. At my delicately minuscule table, with the convenient blanket because goddamn it the sun is out and it may only be 5°C but you will eat outside and like it, in the chairs all facing the rue because why would you want to look at the people you know when there are so many unknown strangers walking past whose faces need exploring, surrounded by others taking the same pause in their day, I was not alone. I had been wandering the city all day, seeing the necessary sights, but I hadn't really seen the city. The city was at the café.
So that's what I had. Cheesecake and red wine and a three pronged fork. I thought it might have been the fatigue or the hunger that made the puzzle pieces fit, but they were just as perfect for each other, alone but not alone, the next day, and the next, at 4 o'clock.
