politics

Infinite Thought’s latest post from Berlin is a heartfelt cry against the pyjamarization of the world. Adam Gopnik wrote a similar piece in Paris to the Moon. Now, some people can’t stand Adam Gopnick – Renata Adler, baby, I’m lookin’ at YOU – but I thought Paris to the Moon had some of the funniest american in paris pieces since the battling Thurbers settled in the berg in the 20s while Jimmy tried to work on his sketches.

Gopnik wrote about trying to dress as an adult in Paris – which was a very unamerican thing to do. He makes the same point in this little essay:

“The first great difference [between Parisians and Americans] is the one already mentioned—the preference in Paris, puzzling to an American, for adulthood over adolescence. There are very few Americans—and very little American culture—not haunted by youth and the idea of the superior happiness of teenage life, by memories of happiness found and lost (or happiness just lost, and now too late to recover). Americans like to remain seventeen for as long as they possibly can, they grant enormous credit to whatever seventeen-year-olds believe, and they have built a culture around the needs—and, some might say, reflecting the wisdoms—of adolescents.

This is because Americans are generally very happy when they are young: teenagers have sex, freedom, drugs, music, some money, and not very much schoolwork. Things tighten only a little in college, there is a summer off, and then suddenly they are plunged into a brutal, insecure work world. There are few shocks as great for an American at twenty-two as the first day of work, when arbitrary power and rampant insecurity invade a largely carefree Eden. This is why careworn Americans listen again and again, unto death, to the music they heard when they were teenagers. It explains a sight so ludicrous to Parisians: middle-age Americans strolling in the city in sneakers and shorts or jeans, dressed like the children they wish they were. They are not immature; they've just been knocked cold by the realities of grown-up life that their culture hides even from itself. “

I think this ludicrous outfit – my outfit, actually, sneakers and jeans – also bugs IT. (Although try to do without shorts on a hot Austin summer day). In one of her posts a while ago, she linked to a bande a part Godard video that, I imagine, is close to her view of how humans should dress. And, incidentally, what they should do in bars. And who can resist Anna Karinen in a black fedora? I too think that all politics should flow out of choreography, although I’m more of a West Side Story man. That there isn't more mass spontaneous dancing in the world points to the sad state of our present decay.