fluency

(From an email.)

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Last night there was a traffic jam on my keyboard. A thousand anxious thoughts eagerly pupeteering my fingers to death made for some rather erratic typing. Now for some composure.

The main thought that dominated that effort was a yearning for an undefined 'focus.' When I arrived in Sweden, much of my drive peetered out. Sure, the last two years were draining, but I had set aside time to decompress during the late summer before heading down to Lund, and I was anything but drained when I came down here.

So here's my latest thought on the matter: is my spell of tameness simply a mixed up attempt to 'speak' swedish? 'Speaking' is more than just a matter of vocabulary, more than proper grammer. One of the things that frustrates me the most about my time in Lund so far is that I'm close enough to being perfectly Swedish that nobody suspects otherwise. This leads to odd situations where incorrect assumptions are made about my cultural fluency. For example...

Last week I was at a work party with a bunch of drinking games where the theme was television shows. It was late, and we started playing a version of American Idol (or just Idol, as it's called in Sweden), where one person sings out a song by an artist on a card, and everyone else has to guess the name of the artist. I essentially couldn't play, because I have zero knowledge of Swedish non-export pop phenoms. This is a trivial example, but it's part of a deeper fluency that I lack, yet my lingual fluency liberally advances me to meet such situations. It's frustrating. I feel like I'm just outside in a lot of situations. I have a bunch of people I hang out with, but few of these relationships extend beyond either a) studying or b) drinking. And in many ways I feel I would be let more inside if I was more American, because then people wouldn't be making such assumptions, and in the example I just ran through, perhaps use only American artists or Swedish export bands.

And then there's the matter of my fluency-but-not-wordsmithery. I'm often frustrated by the fact that I can't express myself in Swedish with the same precession and gusto that I employ in my command of the english language. (Just words like 'gusto', for example.) This is particularly frustrating when it comes to charming women, but also shows up in other arenas. I sometimes just want to say "listen, you might think I'm boring or whatnot, but damn, if I could talk to you in english! The metaphors I would construct, the sweet nothings I would whisper in your ear." Ivan Illich talks about this lingual 'poverty' in his Conversations with Ivan Illich CBC program--he notes that learning a new language is the closest a wealthy person will come to the experience of poverty. The inability to express yourself, the complete lack of toolkit: it all adds up to a profoundly humbling experience. While I'm not learning a new language, and although I command an accent-free fluency of Swedish, the metaphor of being slightly less wealthy is something I feel very strongly. Again I'm going to argue that my fluency actually puts me worse off, because people assume wealth.

It's like having a racecar with a glamorous paint job and brand new wheels, but sporting a lawnmower under the hood. People are going to see you at the starting line and think you're going to be competitive, but then you get blown away as soon as the race starts. Had you pulled up in a Buick Century, nobody would be suprised, but because you look the part, people assume. People who bet on my car to win the race are terribly disappointed, while the Buick Century gets much more appropriate odds. This is pretty much how I've been feeling a lot lately.

Generally speaking, Swedish people are definitely tamer. There's very little of the fiery Kerouacian spirit that I find so bountifully amongst American acquaintances. (most of) My classmates here in Lund are definitely bright, there's no question about that. We school each other over math problems, it's all good fun. But they're tame. They want to spent spring break sleeping on a beach, I want to barter for exotic vegetables in an Egyptian market. They hope to graduate to a slick job at a prestigious company such as Ericsson. I want to change the world. Maybe I just haven't found the crazy ones yet. Last week, when I was heading out to party, my flat-mate Alex said to me "remember, there's no such thing as a lame party, only lame people." There's a lot of truth to that. (Alex is actually really cool, but our age and interests differ so widely that we don't really hang out together.

So I think I may be taming down my act in order to fit in. Maybe. It's a theory. I've decided that I'm going to pile on the responsibilities and activities until kingdom come and then see if it helps get my motor running again. Maybe then I'll fit in less and the barrage of assumptions will stop frustrating my every step. Maybe.

Or maybe I'm just homesick. I'm no longer feeling all that Swedish. And I don't know how I feel about that.