Role Confusion

    Sitting in tonight, my mid terms are starting to pile up. I really wish I was out having a beer and a laugh... but here I am in front of the keys. I actually should be studying. Today, I trained again to be a research assistant at my University’s Psychology Department. I’m looking forward to the experience and it definitely will look good on graduate school applications. One thing that really struck me was how much of the position is acting and taking on a role. The majority of what I have to do is following an elaborate script, and do it as consistently as I can each time. This made me think to myself; how much authenticity is surrendered when we fall into a role?

      Personally, I feel most comfortable when I’m firing off the cuff with what I say and do. I generally grant myself the freedom to do this a lot even when others might act more formally. I think it’s the residue of all the traveling I did. I suppose though a major aspect of “growing up” is submitting to roles that limit your freedom. This is a skill that needs to grow in certain people; I know it has to grow in me. Taking on a role feels like a return to childhood, you make believe again. Except this time it isn’t so fun. You make believe that you are this serious person when you don’t feel like you are. Most people seem to like not acting serious as much as they can. So why aren’t there more jobs for the non serious people?

    What I’m saying I guess is that I wish there was a larger diversity of roles that we can take on and be successful. Being really serious and having people respond to you as an authority doesn’t feel like my bag. One of my professors pointed about public speaking and the need to be able to do it by saying “there are leaders and followers... which one do you want to be?” My answer would be neither – I want to follow my own path, but I don’t care if anyone else follows. That way the only authority I need to be content with is my own. This is a challenge I face, one I guess everyone faces..., how much do you want to remain yourself. And conversely how much of your self are you willing to give up? This is a question that still broods in my heart - I want the esteem a good job brings while still being authentic to myself.

The Chav/ Redneck/ Bogan Love Potion

      You spin me right round, baby! Right round like a record, baby! Right round, round, round! That was my head after waking up from a white lightening bender in Scotland. Every country has its cheap and potent liquor. You know the stuff you use to drink when you were 16 and you wanted to get drunk fast and DIRTY! For most people by 17 they’ve moved on to better grog! However, the backpacker, like a trained basset hound, always sniffs out cheap booze and squeezes that musty old lemon for every drop of alcohol induced insanity it can give!

     In Canada malt liquor is the hobo, young persons, and backpackers drink of choice: Colt 45, Big Bear and Olde English are some of the classics. It’s kind of like beer, but with a nasty, petulant after taste and twice the alcohol percentage. Back when I was 16 at a High School bush party (and yes – my high school did have parties out in the bush...) I remember hitting the Big Bears hard one night. The results were a disaster. I tried to talk to a girl I had a crush on, very ineffectively I might add..., just before tripping over a log and ending up on my back for 10 minutes by the fire. That’s when thankfully my self-preservation instinct kicked in as I managed to pull myself up. A moment longer and I’d have been that passed out guy who has beer poured on him. (Or worse) It was then I hatched a Big Bear induced plan; I’ll use my last strength to stagger inside the bushes so I can hide out till I sober up a bit. Of course, I ended up passing out in the woods. I awoke to the early morning sun and an empty field. This was pre cell phones so I had to walk about 10 kilometres to the nearest town with a brutish hang over. Cheers Big Bear!

      In Australia a particularly cheap 3 litre, get the 4^th litre free, cask of wine was what backpackers clamoured too. Even the Aussie’s themselves had a name for this stuff – “goon.” Really the name said it all. You drink too much and you would become a drunken goon. At the various travel houses, hostels and camp grounds down under goon flowed like water. The routine results were black outs, misunderstandings, Irish/English groups getting even more obnoxiously loud, and a painful hangover that could only be slightly appeased by getting an Australian meat pie the next day. This stuff actually said that it may contain fish extracts in the ingredients!

     No list of noxious alcohols could be complete without the UK addition: White Lightening Cider. White Lightening is supposed to mimic the taste of apple cider. Though, I remember one Scottish bar men mentioning: “aiiii mate, no apples have ever come close to White Lightening.” Nights on this stuff careened out of control. Groups of well adjusted people could be expected to transform into degenerates howling at the moon within hours. As a cultural experiment, if you wanted to see some unlikely hook ups make several litres of this CHAV love potion available. Naturally, Backpackers took to it like moths to a flame.

    I can remember one fine Saturday afternoon in Edinburgh. The looks of boredom on my fellow backpacker’s faces screamed out – afternoon White Lightening Party!  So an Australian friend and I headed down to the bottle shop to get some. Upon arriving I said: “Hey mate you got any White Lightening around? We need a whole whack of it.” He answered – “yeah I do, but I keep it in the back.” He returned with 12 – 3 litre bottles. (The beauty of buying this stuff was that as a reward for buying 2 litres, the third was free!) He smiled at us wearily. “You know – there’s only two types that buy this stuff: backpackers and homeless people! “ Little did he know that only two hours later – a hostel would be coming off its moorings – with people drinking out of pots and pans, afternoon vomit in the toilets, and that stuck up American girl making out with the Australian guy who never wore deodorant! Some people call White Lightening a scourge on society – I call it a welcome reprieve.

Unchained Melody

     There’s a lot of subjectivity when it comes to a word. Three people standing on the subway might have three very different interpretations to what the word success means. In a way that’s the beauty of words – their inherent difference in each person’s mind makes them fodder for art and debate. With this said, I’ve wanted to consider what exactly is a traveler? What does that word mean to me?

         Now technically anybody who has ventured outside of their home city is by definition of having traveled, a traveler. However, this doesn’t encapsulate the spirit of the word. Traveling is an attitude more than an action. Not only stepping away from the life one knows, but choosing to do it again and again is what characterizes a traveler. Fear of the unknown is replaced by allure of the unknown.  The excitement of that which is yet undefined – that which must be defined by them - is what the traveler seeks. To a traveler, the question becomes equal to the answer – what is behind that next corner?  

      At least once in their lives, probably more, a traveler has relocated to another country. People take trips to new places and skim the surface, the traveler immerses themselves.  A new identity is born from this interaction – one that they cannot go back from. This will forever define them and mark them as slightly different to their country men.  To the traveler this distinction is something they quietly relish.

    Fluidity and freedom of movement is what the traveler wants. Cars, houses, and furniture enter the fold slowly.... if at all. Possessions and serious responsibility lock a person to a place. This goes contrary to the traveler’s pathos and propensity to dream of escaping into the unknown again. Foreign lands always beckon... and the promise of a return to that feeling they once had of freedom and transcendence echoes in their ears. Age may silence it slightly, but this is a melody that they cannot escape; a melody that they wouldn’t want to escape from - even if they could...

A UK Night Club

    The voracious, pulsating sounds of house music greeted me as I pulled back the curtain to enter the Zap club in Brighton, England. The base was vibrating the hairs on my skin. Lit cigarettes, sweat, and a touch of marijuana melded together to give the air a physical weight. Nearly every inch of the club was taken up with gyrating bodies.

   The dance floor was a melting pot of humanity. Middle-aged men in suits danced next to eighteen- year old glow stick waving students; a group of girls in glistening black formal dresses danced beside a group of girls wearing bikini tops, short miniskirts and neon coloured thigh high boots; macho Middle Eastern guys in tank tops and gold jewellery danced next to a group of scantily clad flamboyantly gay men. There seemed to be no natural pattern. With each glance I saw a style, only to see its opposite a few feet away. 

    I followed the gaze of many of the clubbers as they looked up, their hands pointing and saluting a boxed in area high above the dance floor. There the DJ stood. He was like an artist in front of his easel, his hands in perpetual motion, working his turn tables and samplers; modifying, with a twist of his wrist, the experience occurring below.

    Back on the dance floor the music slowed. More people joined my gaze towards the DJ. I could feel the warmth of steam coming off the now stationary bodies. Sharp green lasers attached to the DJ box shone through this hazy cloud of perspiration giving it an eerie, translucent green hue. An aura of anticipation and restlessness was setting in. The DJ looked over the crowd, at least two hundred strong, waited a moment to build drama, the previous song now just a murmur to the frantic scream it had been, then with a mighty flick he punched one of his dials bringing on the other turn table.  A new song, infinitely faster, more intense, and more vibrant enveloped the club.

       The mob voiced its approval with a loud roar! People, whom previously had been standing, started moving to the music, their feet pounding the cement floor, their hands searching into the air. Knowing glances and smiles were exchanged everywhere. There was a fraternity amongst these people, this moment was there’s together.