Where do YOU come from?

The American Village,
Tokyo, Japan 1958

So you too have perhaps learned the meaning of another new word today. (I consider it part of my job as a translator). And hopefully you too are able to recall your own first dream. I find it interesting, between yesterday and today, to partake of an interview with the contemporary video filmmaker Bill Viola, in conjunction with the opening of his retrospective Hatsu-yume (First Dream) at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo at the close of last year: Interview with Bill Viola, Dec 2006

God forbid that the myriad of curious coincidences that connect us to places, events and people should render us superstitious (see my blog entry May 30, 2007). Remember we boomers have been around long enough to make a lot of connections.

When people ask me where I came from (which still happens regularly in Sweden), it’s not at all farfetched for me to think to respond “nowhere”, and bounce the question back, because we’ve all moved and changed our positions. And for me, the boundaries of so many of those spaces we call home - like a place, a house, a village, a town, not the least in Japan - have long since and literally imploded. Apparently obliterated, they have become an integral part of us, our memories, and the collective memory of everyone who has lived there too. Sometimes I think that if there were a mold for the post-war generation, for baby boomers, then my life must have been one of the first to be cast from it.

Several years ago, a Swedish acquaintance (pre-war) suggested that I had been born with a silver spoon in my mouth. Since he didn’t know much about my background, I was more baffled than offended. For the record, let it be known that unlike most of my peers I did not receive support from my family or from the American government to put myself through one of the best, however the most expensive, public universities in the U.S. Because my parents had paid state taxes I was fortunately able to attend that university on resident tuition, which was considerably lower than than for out-of-state and foreign students. I paid for my schooling by working odd part-time jobs and received various scholarships because I was an ambitious student. When I came to Sweden I had a good education in my bagage, one suitcase, and enough money to support myself while learning Swedish and until I could find work. I have since realized that any post-war middle-class American was probably considered wealthy by pre-war Scandinavian standards, and that my friend’s projection was undoubtedly augmented by memories of ancestors who had emigrated from poverty to realize the American dream… and never returned. The Swedish dream then? Who the hell am I to pose such a question? When you try to entertain yourself with reflections on a silver spoon, you’re either right-side-up (convex) or upside-down (concave).