~existential people pleasing~generational social media~ conundrum

Last weekend, I got really sick. Our house didn’t have running water either so without a working toilet, I spent Thursday night sprawled out on the kitchen floor between the fridge and the trash can, bracing onto the former’s white plastic sterility for comfort while puking into the latter.

I would go through fleeting periods of serenity and attempt to shake the unsettled feeling out of my  stomach by getting up to walk around, only to be forcefully spasmed back to the trash can to assume my rigid position of convulsively purging hot remnants of the previous night’s side of food poisoning.

At about 6 AM, I realized I desperately needed water to drink, having run out of my personal water bottle supply. I had begun to feel a bit better so I changed into a pair of shorts, said goodbye to the security guard (my only human interaction of the night/day, albeit fleeting) and started walking down the dirty rocky road in my barely sturdy sandals.

I walked down our lane to arrive at an alley. I was used to everyone staring at me. I was of course an “obruni” (the Twi word for “foreigner” crowds seemed to yell at me), quite visibly not from here. Although, unlike my “white” counterparts, I had their dark skin, I still didn’t belong because I wasn’t part of their rich history. It was okay. I was used to sticking out. It was a bit comforting.

Greeted by a friendly shopkeeper, I bought 3 1.5 liter Voltic water bottles. I had a hard time juggling all of them back home, haunted by their sheer density coupled with lethal threats from my aching stomach.

The sun was beating down an incomparable golden hue as I, with my unseasonal (rather unregional) mustard-colored sweater, emanated a sickly version of the same hue. My glasses, blurry from too many fingerprints, kept slipping down the ridge of my nose, but with none of my fingers free to adjust them, I angled my head back up to catch their fall.

I paused for a second, then, to think. I was this little dot in West Africa at the moment; no one knew where I was. My muddy stomach was lurching on yet no one could hear the yelps but myself. Even I was distracted. My head was with a friend in New York City and another friend in Orange County. But that’s how it had been since my plane touched down in Accra: I was never really here.

Marinating in this daze of sick and hot, my stomach’s growls should have beckoned me to nowness and hereness. But when no one else really knew my here and now, was it even really happening?

I imagined the tweets I could produce about the occurrence, about my now disaffected state. The Twitter logo of the idealized bird suspended in motion danced in my mind as I imagined the 140 character statements I could compose as a meta-critique of my preoccupation to publicly record at a time like this:

ritu @jamesvandergeek

“Is life life only when recorded or shared? Do moments alone happen?”

Was my preoccupation with recording or sharing merely a byproduct of the social media generation? A generational preoccupation catered toward my online presence? Or was it just a greater human nature desire of clamoring to please the people around you, facilitated by the invention of social media?

One minute later, I could tweet:

“We are all such little people doing little things we don’t even notice other little people doing little things.”

What were my friends in Paris, Florence, New York City and Orange County thinking about at the moment? What were they doing? I wouldn’t know. I couldn’t.

Another minute later, I would tweet as a justification for these 140 character bounded statements of uncharacteristic lofty statements:

“Have to tweet these things bc I’m afraid to forget what walking around at 6 AM after puking my brains out feels like; the mind is so fickle”

Although the only world I could ever truly experience and attempt to understand was my own, I would probably forget this raw moment of my brain sensitive with little sleep, little human interaction and too much fluid loss, ever feeling to this sensation around me, moments after my brain stopped its hypersensitive trip.

I spent the next day vomiting more and then as a patient in a Ghanian hospital, but I still wasn’t really there. My mind was stuck in its own network of time and space: what others were thinking, what others were thinking of me. On the cold surface of the kitchen tile for a night, on the rocky dusty path for a few minutes, in my mind perpetually recording and sharing my life to ensure it’s real... or at least really happening.

(And that was my only actually tweeted tweet of the set: “perpetually recording life to ensure it’s actually happening” I think it did well, probably a couple retweets and favorites.)

chri55ybb & ritubb

[written last November]

Even in person, his bony frame and stringy hair did nothing to hint at the genius of his song-writing and human exploration. But when he opened his mouth and scrunched up his forehead to convey incomparable emotion, I was so amazed…because he was real.

(trigger warning: sentimentality and overindulgence)

I first heard Christopher Owen’s former band, GIRLS, at a really strange point of my life. It was a stark period in which I attempted to navigate through confusion and bereavement so engulfing that words couldn’t even help me. I was scared because for the first time, I was without my articulation. Writing had always been my security blanket!  But at that scary moment in time, I had no words to fall back on because I couldn’t, for the life of me, express what I was going through.

I vividly remember the first time I heard “Hellhole Ratrace.” I remember seeing the music video and wondering who the voice and genius was behind the inexpressible lyrics. (“I’m all alone with my deep thoughts/I’m all alone with my heartache and my good intentions.”) Or the first time I heard “Broken Dreams Club” and was blown over by how personal it was to my own struggle (“I know you feel like I do too/And even though I’m close to you,/I can’t be what you need/You’re just as lost as me.”) I began to realize that the band’s front-man and songwriter (Christopher Owens) was an acquired taste [I had heard many people I respect discrediting the value of his voice or music.] But, to me, Owens was articulating profound emotions I personally couldn’t explain but felt so deeply.

Earlier today, I had lunch with my friend Brooke at a café on University, and we discussed how disillusioned we were with the people we once idolized. When we were both high schoolers in our respective suburbs, artists were like unreal, unattainable connections to a very new-agey enlightenment. So, when we both flocked to the city, we expected to change in some way indicative of this “enlightenment.” 

But we had both realized as we had begun to work with people we admired or have very few degrees of separation with artists we respected, the “enlightenment” never occurred. We only had really gotten more disillusioned and confused by how we had previously (and still) idolize very normal people. The conversation was particularly frightening because I didn’t even know who was without the admiration I have for people I aspire to be like.

I saw Christopher Owens perform tonight at (le) poisson rouge.

Owens grew up in the infamous cult Children of God, eventually moved to a war-torn Slovenia and eventually eventually, after befriending Ariel Pink, began to explore music. He never went to school, which means he was never spoon-fed conventionalities and cultivated to be indicative of societal normalcy. Instead, he expresses very organic and completely universal emotions in simplistic form. And that’s what, I feel, is so tremendous about him.

I felt no disillusionment when he closed his eyes to croak out, “If your heart is broken, you will find fellowship with me” when performing his “Here We Go.” I felt anything but. His earnest voice and shell-shocked emotion felt more personal to me than any word that had left my own mouth in months.

An out-of-body experience, his second solo show was devastatingly personal. When I met him, I said nothing of consequence, but he had given me hope, incomparable to that of any heart to heart with a friend or any hopeful semi-autobiographical New Yorker article. I knew I would be okay because he had the strength to be okay.

I walked home and glanced at my reflection while passing by the risotto restaurant and realized that I was so fortunate to have my own stories to tell and to be the witness of such beautifully complicated people close to me. I had realized that I was proud of the person I was becoming and so unbelievably proud of the people I surrounded myself with.

It’s a weird crossing point because I feel as though I have just gotten used to this scary city and am now leaving to Ghana for five months. But these are my stories, and I am so excited that this is my life and that you’re here to read this/share your stories and overly indulgent self-reflective blog posts with me and that Christopher Owens exists to say things I can’t say.

Thank you.