Conversations with non-Americans have made me think about this country for a while now. While I certainly have my TCK moments, out of the countries that I’m connected to, there is nowhere I’d rather be.  Compared to being ostracized in Sweden, too open and continental in Finland, or forever Other in China, I can very reasonably claim to belong here and others accept me as one of ‘theirs’. And by now, not only is my life here, I have a history here.

I have old college friends. I have a Social Security card that’s getting worn around the edges. I have memories of driving to Chicago, to Minneapolis-St. Paul, to Maryland, to Florida. Of the Atlantic City beaches as a child, Captiva Island beaches as a teen, and Wrightsville Beach as an adult. I have a lease, a car, furniture. All my files are on letter-size paper (as opposed to A4). I give times in AM and PM. Now that my parents re-expatriated to the States, even my family is here.

When I was in the midst of living in Sweden knowing that my pain, loneliness and depression were because of repatriation and seeking out non-Swedes obsessively on the Internet (back then it was all IRC), someone told me that I shouldn’t forget we’re all under the same sky. I looked out the window and cried, wishing fervently that I was under another spot of the same sky.

Now I can look up and I am. I pulled off The Great Escape. I have nothing left in Sweden that can pull me back there. The last time I saw the Atlantic, I saw it from Coney Island, walking in the sand, eating a corn dog, with an old friend I’ve known since freshman year in college. He moved to New York and I was visiting. And I buried my feet in the sand, smelled the sea, and looked out toward the horizon, knowing I was literally an ocean away from my personal vision of hell. Buried in my own history over here. Brought there by life already lived here, that keeps me here, safe, in the best place to be a TCK I’ve ever experienced.

I have never held anything but an American driver’s license. Happy 4th of July.

Reel 2 Reel’s I Like To Move It (insert giggle of recognition here) similarly clearly has traditionally non-European influences and performes, and who cares? That doesn’t mean much to me, or most of the Europewide listeneers either, I imagine. It’s our song, simply because it was a hit.

More recently, there’s Boom Boom Boom. The video has people in Illinois basketball jerseys and various American pop culture, but I’m fairly sure that it’s safe to say it’s not an American song. They’re just using the American stuff as props to make it look more international and new, but given how you can identify your taste in music by saying ‘electronica’ and that makes sense to people here (as opposed to rock, country, r&b, rap, or hip-hop), I would assume that most of these songs were always meant for local consumption. Here, you can see fairly clearly how what Americans might consider black music speaks on behalf of the US as a whole. (For those who are thinking about Rednex, think about how we laugh at that song compared to most Europop.)

Look at the comments under all these songs on YouTube in various languages. We’re all feeling united by the music, rather than divided. That’s just what happens in an era of globalization. People move around. They bring music with them. They get influenced. That doesn’t mean we’re all the same. It just means new things are happening.

I feel a little alone again – very few of my friends might know what any of those songs are. Even the largest club or Europop anthems never made it here, and neither did the unifying and open music culture.

Becoming part of a new language and culture is to make yourself more than you were.

At the heart of true multiculturalism lies multilingualism.

The world is watching you. The world always has been watching you. They watched you far before 9/11, and they’re still watching. People watch what your President does, how he negotiates, how he smiles, what he has to say to them. They watch to see what you’re wearing, where you shop, how you talk, how your society is portrayed in your TV series, in your movies. Unbeknownst to you, you are all on a country-sized stage with the spotlight on you. You don’t look up often, and when you do, you never sense the eyes watching you from the side of the stage, trying to elucidate what’s going to happen next from the muscle movement in your face, from your choice of words, or from your clothes.

You cannot turn the spotlight off, you can’t step down from the stage. And while you’re up there giving your performance, people are reviewing you as you go. Everyone’s whispering and talking to each other, pointing, commenting, keeping track. Arguments arise, sometimes very heated ones, in the audience. Not infrequently, one section of the audience will only continue watching from the corners of their eyes and focus their attention on a bitter argument about what you just did, and whether it might be a good idea to do the same, or whether it would be treacherous and stupid. Some of the audience is paying attention because they want to be on stage too, they want to be up there giving the performance of their lives, flicking people they didn’t like off and pretending to be just as unaware of the audience as you are.

Other parts of the audience feel threatened by you and how you are so flippant, even though you are on stage and everyone’s watching. They don’t know that when you’re up there, you feel like you disappear into this mass of people and that your actions are only your own. Some in the audience have learnt how to play off of people’s feelings about the whole play and can rally people around them to throw tomatoes, in addition to the individuals who spontaneously throw rotten fruit. Everyone has their own reason for watching. But everyone’s watching.

I know, because I can slip off the side of the stage when only a few people are watching (like on a plane) and sit quietly in the audience, and no one will be none the wiser. And now that I’m back on stage, I’m telling you – don’t pick your nose, don’t pull out that wedgie, don’t make a face you think no one will notice – there are so many people watching what you do that someone will see it. And the audience doesn’t know you personally, they don’t know who you really are – all they have to go by is your actions on stage. And there is nothing you can do about that. All you can do is learn to make big movements that are clearly visible from far away, act out what you want to communicate, and smile. Don’t forget to smile. People know that under the stage is the biggest, most destructive army the world has ever seen, and the last thing they want to see is upset people jumping on top of bombs. That’s why most of them are watching. Their fate is tied up with what’s going on on that stage, but they can only influence what happens in indirect ways.

If you feel the urge to act on the audience’s behalf, keep in mind that because everyone’s watching, there is no single thing that they want or expect. You have to pick a part of the audience to focus on. And furthermore, shut up and listen whem they speak – you can’t speak for someone you haven’t heard speak at length. I am not saying this on behalf of the audience – I am saying this to alert you to that you are being scrutinized. Do with that information what you will, but don’t forget it. And please think of your country and its reputation before you do anything at all.