Nanci Griffith is my Porn

Thanks to Tesco, I have two potted herbs that sit by my window waiting for the sun to shine. I don't have a windowsill, so if I want them to survive I have to move them around the room into the sun whenever I get home. One basil plant and one parsley plant - they're comforting and occasionally make my room smell like pesto, if I get them a lot of sun.

It's gotten to the point here that hearing someone pronounce "er"s at the end of words sounds unnatural to me. Sometimes. It's really when you catch someone from Bristol that it's most obvious ("you alright my lovERRRRRR?"), but it happens when listening to other Kenyon-Exeter students, or K'Nex students. Sometimes at least.

America is still oddly present for me here in England, and when it turns up it's like having deja vu, or bumping into an ex while holding someone else's hand. It's...wonky, I guess is the best term.

Like I was in my room trying to read Dombey and Sons, I think, and my window was open. Another window near mine was too, and inside that room a bunch of Italian girls had gotten together and were watching a DVD, in English. So there was chattering in Italian and then you'd also hear the DVD in English.

And then suddenly a few familiar chords make the hair on the back of my neck stand on end, and the theme song on the DVD starts playing:

"California....California...HERE WE GOOOOOOOO!"

And so I was really listening to a bunch of Italian girls watching The OC somewhere in my dorm. And I had no idea what they were saying, and I've never even seen a full episode of the OC, but I knew exactly what they were talking about (Eyebrows Guy?).

Or you hear an actor doing a monologue from a Tennessee Williams play, and you're just a little taken aback by the fact that they don't know if it's "New Orleans" or "Old Orleans."

I heard a Chinese exchange student while washing dishes with me start singing "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" and I asked him, "are you singing The Lion King?" "Yes!" he replied, "great song. One of my favorites." And then he started humming something by 98 Degrees, or N'Sync, or something.

You meet people, too, like Canadians, and it's like you're part of a secret society, or some downtrodden people or underground political movement. You can recognize them as soon as they talk to you, and it's just like, "yes, brother, you're not alone." "I know, brother, neither are you." At least I have subtext with Canadians like that when I meet them. Maybe that's just me.

And there is a language difference between British and American, like "sketchy," and "raisins." I was telling someone something was sketchy the other day and they quirked their head, and then I said "oh, do you have 'sketchy' here? That must be American..." and I completely forgot my point and it was awkward.

You are a stranger in an oh so strange land. The Drama department here even seems to train their actors in an entirely opposite way than Kenyon does. I understand Kenyon doesn't have all the answers, and so maybe it's just my programming malfunctioning, but it's just another communications barrier, as a director I have to sit down and re-define terms to make sure nothing gets lost in translation. And then when I'm acting I have to translate for myself. I don't know what to say about the drama department ultimately. More data needed.

Speaking of more data, we went to a tiny town on the river Exe (Ex?) that runs through and past Exeter. It was called Topsham, and from there we caught a ferry to a pub on the other side of the river. They had a playground in the yard made from, literally, AN OLD BOAT with a swingset and some ropes and a tire playset attached to it. IT WAS AMAZING. There was no plastic, no slide, even the swings were chains and what looked hand-stained, or at least hand-made. Everything about it was old, the ropes looked like they'd been soaking in a little too much river air, and if you jumped too hard on the boat you might literally put your foot right through the deck.

But what I discovered at this pub, The Turf, was a hard cider called "Dragon Tears" and I think the title went on to have something to do with Saint George. In any case, it was amazing. The bartender told me I had to promise to drink all of it, but it wasn't hard. That's really the first drink that wasn't Gin and Tonic that I finished, and I don't count a single shot gin and tonic as particularly hard to finish. That's kind of the point, isn't it?

Anyway, you'd never find that pub in America, from what I can tell. It's great. It's cool, "awesome" even, though that's an American term, I guess. That playset and that pub were so amazingly British that I don't know how I could want anything else. But sometimes you wonder.

For instance, Subways here (the sandwich store) are restaurants of ill-repute: they're never well-kept and Chavs loiter in and around them. To top it off, they use balsamic vinegar instead of red wine vinegar. So even once you make it past the dirt and the Chavs just to get your Spicy Italian footlong sub for twice as much as it would cost at home - thank you exchange rate, thank you SO much - once you get it, it doesn't even have the right stuff on it.

And you get these little cravings, and you push them to the back of your mind, because, I mean, THIS IS ENGLAND. YOU ONLY HAVE NINE MONTHS HERE. Do you really want to spend all your time at a Pizza Hut? Or a Starbucks? It's just not socially acceptable for a transfer student to be wanting these kinds of things.

I knew someone named Eric Wagner who went to live in the woods for two weeks with a program - you learn to survive and you find yourself, it's supposed to be great. You eat, like, muskrats. And so the counselors don't let you talk about food from back home, because inevitably the kids end up going on these huge rants: "loads of mashed potatoes with gravy trickling down the sides, your fork pushes in - firm potatoes - but soft enough to swallow whole." They call it "Food Porn" and I'm pretty sure they take any food porn they find and go bury it or something before it causes any more trouble.

What I do, when no one's looking, is I go home and I lock the door. And usually I close the window and the curtain for sound muffling. And I take out an old CD I brought with me, one of the only ones I actually packed up and took: Nanci Griffith's "One Fair Summer Evening." And I listen to it the whole way through while checking my email.

Nanci Griffith has a thick southern drawl, it's even Texan, and a chirpy voice, it almost sounds like she never really grew up. You can dislike her music, surely, but this CD is a live recording, so you hear her introduce every song. She literally introduces one like this:

"Most of my mother's family came way out from West Texas in a little town called Lochland which is somewhere close to Luvlan. But not too close to Luvlan. Nobody likes to be too close to Luvlan.

"But I had five great uncles who were all farmers during the Great Depression, and after the Great Depression well four of them sold off their family farms and they bought liquor stores and dry-cleanin' businesses getting ready for the war boom, y'know, but one great uncle - my Great Uncle Tootie - never sold his farm, and he pushed a plow for eighty years, and he's still livin' out there in Lochland Texas and this next song is a tune I wrote for him and his wife my Great Aunt Betty Mae.

"And my Great Aunt Betty Mae said that survivin' the Great Depression on a farm was not easy and she understands why the young farmers nowadays are havin' such a hard time, because, she went through it herself.

"And the dust blew so hard during the Great Depression on her farm that she said she was afraid, to go to sleep at night, cause she was afraid the dust would blow so hard one night that she'd wake up one morning and find herself living in Oklahoma and she by God didn't want to live in Oklahoma!"

So I think you can dislike her music, but from the sound of it, I can't bring myself to dislike her as a person. And I really like her music anyway. It's twangy, and southern, it uses words like "banjo" and "pickup" and "five and dime." It's NOT Euro-pop, or Coldplay, or even The OC or The Lion King or 98 Degrees. But it's good, it's not country. It's just southern. My Mom and my Aunt Meg used to play it all the time.

So, Nanci Griffith is my America Porn.

She solidified her title when I was walking through the City Centre (re, not ERRRRRRR) of Exeter the other day and saw a Woolworths, and I thought to myself, "Woolworths. Huh. I've seen that somewhere, or heard of it. But I don't remember ever actually going to one." That night I went home, closed the curtains, locked the door, got ready for bed and, carefully slipped "One Fair Summer Evening" into my computer.

There's a song called "Love at the Five and Dime" that starts out with someone playing a repeated series of chords on an acoustic guitar, and the series always ends with this little, it's horrible to describe in words, but this little high pitched PING on the guitar. It sounds so much better when you hear it.

While the guitar's playing she opens the song like this:

"One of my greatest fascinations in life has always been a little store where you can go in and get a vanilla coke. Listen to the popcorn machine, go pop pop pop! Dig through a record bin and find a record for sixty-nine cents that you always wanted all your life..."

And she goes on, talking about high school, stopping by this store while waiting to transfer buses with just enough time to look for records, get yourself a drink, wink at the boys and get back on the bus. And it's a Woolworth's that she's talking about. And I almost shit myself! Because:

"... and Woolworth stores are the same everywhere in the world. They have this wonderful smell to 'em, they smell like, popcorn and chewing gum rubbed around on the bottom of a leather soled shoe.

"The first time we went to Europe we, landed in London and we were driving through central London and we came around a corner and, by golly, there was a Woolworth's store. And I wanted them to stop the car and let me out so I could go fill up my suitcase with unnecessary plastic objects."

I had JUST passed the place and hadn't even bothered to stop in and SMELL it! CRAP!

"And if you've ever been in a BIG Woolworth's store. Where there's an elevator. Or a 'lift' as they say in Europe. Every time the doors open on the elevator they make a little noise like this:"

And the guitarist has just gotten to the end of a series, and PING.

"I've often been asked what that little noise was. And that's what it is. It's the elevator doors."

If I could figure out a way to include the song on this blog I would, but I'm not skilled with computers. And it's not on Kenster - ye Kenyonites - I've looked. As far as I'm concerned the only copy available to me of these songs is the one CD I have, with its jewel all stained with coke and cracked. That's why I brought it.

So now I listen to Nanci Griffith with the windows open, the curtains pulled back and the lights on. Naked.


...


Not actually naked. Just kidding.

Anyway, the darkening clouds are moving like Protoss Carriers (look it up on google images if you don't know), blotting out the sun as it sets. My poor basil is going to have to wait until tomorrow to get any nutrition... I know I promised I'd write shorter posts, and I will. Just not today, I guess.