Jonesing for JetLag
Proust said "Real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new places but seeing with new eyes". I've got another trip coming up next week, this time across the pond, and I'll need more than just sights and sounds to keep the topic fresh. Europe, all parts, have been claimed, charted, mapped and written about countless times (or more than that) so how does one avoid writer's block and make their stuff a shade different than everyone else's? I ask myself this every time I embark on another trip of discovery, uncertainty and mystery. How do I shake up a reader's complacencies and ideologies - possessing them just long enough to want them to go where I've been? It's true that I feel most ALIVE when I'm far far far away from home but how to express that? Putting emotions into words is more frustrating than hailing a cab during rush hour on 6th ave. It's a challenge to stand out in a crowd, especially when that crowd includes the likes of poets and humorous travel writers like Pico lyer, Paul Theroux, Tom Haines, Jim Soliski and Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul. Oh, and of course of the writers for GoNomad. I guess I'm just feeling anxious again to travel - a euphoria I can only compare to being in love.
posted by Sonja Stark of PilotGirl™ @ 11:06 PM
2 Comments:
Sony why not tell us where you're going?
That alone makes the story come alive to us. That Jamestown Voyage is how we all got here to begin with, and the departure city makes it a compelling read.
A fresh way to see or describe Europe? One way might be to consider how 'Europe' (which used to be no more than a geographical concept) has, now that it's a government, eroded distinctions between countries which used to have distinct personalities which changed with borders, now less and less the case. The landscape changes, but the cultures are often very similar, certainly the goods for sale, the clothing, the customs.
Another aspect to focus on might be foreign minorities in European countries who have not truly been (nor want to be) assimilated, e.g., Turks in Germany, North Africans in France, Pakistanis in England - i.e., 'Europeans' who have dual loyalties. Whereas in the US the second generation wants to leave 'the old country' behind (helped by their automatic citizenship), see themselves as, say, Greek-Americans or Italian-Americans, I doubt you will find people who would describe themselves as 'Turkish-Germans' or 'Moroccan-Italians'.
Europe has gone both directions in the last fifty or so years - towards a homogeneity and towards a 'we versus non-Europeans' stance.
Still another question to investigate is how Europeans see their history compared to what we've been taught about their history in American textbooks. There's plenty to write about. Have a great trip!
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