I was talking with an acquaintance last night, whose main line of conversation was that she misses "emo people." This is what she said. After some probing, I found that this means that she misses cliques. She misses how at the lunch table in high school, everybody sat with their own group, and intermingling was kept to a minimum because in the world outside of your lunch table there is nothing to find but ridicule and possible rejection. She misses going to concerts with everybody dressing and acting and living and fucking and caring the same way. People who are "So LA" because they're always dropping names. People who wear dreadlocks and mean it, damn it!
At first, my inclination was to slap her in the head, and vacate the premises. But seeing as how the premises was largely occupied by good friends, who would most likely be disconcerted by me whacking their flat-mate and running away screaming, I decided to take the high road, and give what she was saying some thought, in an effort to possibly prolong the inevitable slappage.
It's a funny observation she made, and it's a strange, but valid, thing to miss in France. Because here, simply by being born and raised French, you undoubtedly dosubscribe to a certain set of preconceived notions. Wine is worth caring about, as is food. Strangers are to be regarded with caution. It's important that every time you leave the house, you're dressed like the mannequins in front of the stores downtown, whether it's the haute couture look or the vintage subculture look you're sporting. Everybody takes a break at lunch, and on Sunday, everything's closed down, and this is a good thing. It's called having a culture, and it's something we're missing in the States. In order to have a culture in the States, you've got to be an "emo person." Or a jock or an artist or a bohemian or a businessman or a New Yorker or whatever. You choose it and you be it, and for the while that you are it, you subscribe to it more or less fully. And you can potentially move on, change genre, if you like. Unless you're born into another culture, like, for example, your parents are immigrants and you speak a second language at home, or perhaps something less drastic, this is your option in the States. Because we don't agree on things like schedule, food, language, religion, whatever. It's a good and bad thing, because it's by nature an ambiguous thing.
But there's no real getting around being French. With rare exception, it's a culture of people who act in a certain set of ways. Which isn't to say there's not variation, especially between regions (for example, between here and Paris). But their look is just that, a look. At the bottom of that, they're still French. And we're still American. Which means we can understand your culture, and adopt it, but we'll never really own it like you do. And perhaps it's silly to miss that superficiality, but it's something that is lacking here, so it's not outright wrong to do so. It's just a little weird.
We did both agree, however, that Icelandic music is the coolest thing ever. Basically everything that comes out of Iceland is solid gold. Check it out: Bjork, Sigur Ros, Mum, the list goes on. Their government actually funds good music. When do you think our government's going to jump on that bandwagon? Four years? However long it is, it's too long. So the moral of my story is, give me some money.