The Anchoress

America is Wide Awake, and Dreaming Glorious Dreams
Originally posted August 29, 2004

A Mother-Hung Nation? Meyer, Again
Originally posted June 29, 2006

AMERICA IS WIDE AWAKE AND DREAMING GLORIOUS DREAMS

“You are such a shy person,” my husband said as we drove home from a long, pretty good concert this evening. “You stammer and get red whenever you meet a stranger. How is it you manage, time after time, to get into these loud, public brawls?”

Well, alright, there is all that Irish in me, and that might explain some of it, but my husband has a point and it makes me wonder about the vast difference between shyness and timidity. It is true that I hate meeting new people. I don’t hate the people, I simply hate meeting them. I hate not having a fluid grasp of all the social cues and niceties (there was quite a raucus, barbarian quality to my immediate family and early formation and so the social graces simply do not flow, at it were…)

However, for all of my shyness, I am not a timid woman. Rather, I tend to speak my mind too quickly when an interior censor would be advisable. It happened again tonight, at a YES concert at Jones Beach Theatre.

At intermission, as the roadies set up for the band, my husband left me to get a soft drink and I stood and looked appreciatively around the venue. Two men were also enjoying the play of full moonlight on water and we chatted amiably. One of them pointed out the VIP area, which looked comfortable and seemed to provide a wide variety of refreshment. The other fellow said, “it’s not worth the money, unless of course, you’re writing it off at Halliburton!”

Out of nowhere, perfect strangers talking, and this utterly stupid remark goes forth, and I cannot help myself, because I’m so sick of the mindless hate-zone so many people have fallen into without even realizing it. Calling on my limited gifts for diplomacy I say…I believe I said this and did not sneer it…”Yes, that eeeeeeevil corporation, Halliburton! Yes, they would just write off VIP tickets, wouldn’t they? Not like the rest of those companies throughout the nation and the world! Heck, not even like the corporate owner of this venue! Only Halliburton would write off entertainment. Halliburton, hiss, hiss!”

Things went downhill from there. I had to listen to how stupid America is, how materialistic, how shallow, how superficial. I heard that the Europeans were so much more sophisticated, so much more laid back, so much more soulful than Americans. “They are simply of a higher caliber, altogether,” one man sniffed at me, “than Americans. Although they are, perhaps a tiny bit too class conscious!”

“The beauty of America,” I said quietly as I tried not to explode, “is that anyone of any so-called class may ascend or descend to another simply by virtue of how much drive, energy and imagination they have, and how hard they are willing to work!”

“There you go,” the other man said, “it always comes back down to this idea of hard work - it’s so pathetic!” His voice began to rise. “It’s always about the time-card with Americans, it’s always about the job, about getting ahead, about the elite, it’s never about leisure, or family or art!”

I almost choked. America not about art? I looked about the amphitheater, old and graceful, surrounded by water, part of a Robert Moses-designed public beach. It is a little gem of community ownership. There is nothing at all elitist in the brickwork and copper architecture, but there is art. We were attending a rock concert - an artform descended from Jazz, the quintessential American music. The place itself is a testimony to imagination and hard work. I thought of all of the families who - when the beach was being designed and built in the early part of the 20th century - had a breadwinner employed by the venture. I thought of the houses and cars that were able to be acquired because of the jobs the design had created, and the tax revenues from those jobs which went toward building Long Island’s excellent public schools and public works.

The very beach on which we stood had been for many the motor which drove acquisition of wealth, education, lessons in dance, music, tennis, all of which fostered additional, continuing excellence. I saw all of this and thought about the everyday people who had punched their time clocks day after day to build such a treasure, and I felt such a sense of pride and admiration well up inside me that I couldn’t speak for a moment. When I could, I turned to the fellow and said. “Look around you. Are you blind? Look at America! This venue seats 14,000 people, on a waterfront, surrounded by something natural and wild that we worked to integrate! And it’s not here to serve elites who take themselves and their money seriously! This is a crowd of suburban people who worked hard all week and don’t particularly feel the need to go into Manhattan to affirm themselves or their lives when this excellent and beautiful theater is right here! You think Europe is so much better? More soulful, did you say?” I shook my head. “Both spiritually and philosophically, Europe is asleep, because it wants to be. But it’s a terrible sleep, because it is a sleep without dreams, and everyone knows that sleep without dreams leads only to madness and a terrible decay. America is not asleep. In fact, America is wide awake and bustling and busy and creating and building. Yes, I know, the hard work idea again, I know you don’t like it, but a body at rest stays at rest. America is wide awake and moving…and even still, somehow, she dares to dream. America is dreaming, even now.”

My husband returned and lead me away, back to our breezy seats and the music. But the conversation with those two men stayed with me. And so has that sense of pride.

I expect those two gentlemen who so loved Europe over their own country are the sort to laugh and applaud the demonstrations and hate-filled displays which will be all over the news this week as the Republicans convene in New York City and the more extreme (or addled) members of the opposition do their best to insult, shock or harrass the visitors. They won’t get it. They won’t see that the people being subjected to this classless treatment are the people who dream of public beaches with landmark towers and who build them while they sweat in blue workshirts. They see materialists groveling for a paycheck so they can buy something for their lover or their kids, and they sneer at it. I see a country that understands that what is not moving forward it is growing stagnant, a people who instinctively understand that a bridge and some beaches, and a pleasant environment and appropriate infrastructure, and music under the stars are good things and blessings - things which feed our souls, that these things do not add up to an environmental travesty that has made them impure.

I may hate meeting new people, but I love Americans. I love them with all of their faults and follies, because I know Americans; I know this one thing: there is greatness of spirit within them, and one needn’t stammer to meet them and know it as well. God bless ‘em all, I say, even the ones who don’t understand what a gift they have been given.

***

A MOTHER-HUNG NATION? MEYER, AGAIN

Yesterday, in this piece on Hamlet and Harry Potter, I wrote this:

Here is the interesting question…when a life has been lived with a sense of deep mission - as in either Hamlet’s or Harry’s case - and that mission has been fulfilled, what is the purpose of the life, thereafter? [...] Perhaps this is why monarchs, old generals, popes, entrepreneurs, mother-hung rock stars and CBS newsmen can never willingly retire and live out their days. Without their sense of mission, life has no thrust and parry, no vivacity, no purpose.

Because I have a bit of a nudge-streak in me, I decided to send that last bit to a few acquaintances at CBS, including Dick Meyer, whose columns I frequently find so interesting, I must comment - even though my commentary sometimes lead to sticky debate.

Meyer wanted to know what “Mother-Hung” meant and then he pointed me toward his latest piece, The Lonely State of America, which comments on this recent study on social isolation in America.

Now, you know I take every “study” with a grain of salt for two reasons, firstly because everything is always in flux, nothing is static, and life is unpredictable, and so today’s “study” can be tomorrow’s hoo-ha, and secondly because whenever a “study” is given full-trumpet fanfare in the press, soon all the big and little laws based on the study are upon us, for better or worse. Sometimes I think studies - interesting as they are - are done for no other purpose than to excite legislation, but I digress.

Meyers writes that this study’s findings “should scare you.” These days “scared” is how every “study” wants you to feel, so fear is useless. I would say this study should make us more thoughtful, than scared.

I urge you to read his whole piece - I don’t agree with all of it, of course - but it is well worth your reading and passing along.

Meanwhile, in answer to his question:

Mother-hung. People who spend their whole lives either trying to please the mother or to replace her missing love. I’ve noticed that a large number of rock stars (and other celebs, to be honest) either lost their moms early in life (Madonna, Bono, John Lennon, Rosie O’ Donnell) or had bad or complicated relationships with their mothers (Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Mick Jagger, Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland…Bill Clinton!) I’ve always thought that for these folks public adoration was the “mother replacement,” and one reason why these people can never stop or retire.

Which is actually kind of an interesting correlation to Meyer’s piece. These people, lacking mothers, look ever outward and require enormous adulation, but it’s all long-distance adulation - the length of a playing field or arena, via video, CD, radio - it’s not personal or warm. Just think of the gazillion stories of stars who had the love of the distant world but lived in private hells because they had no one to talk to, no intimacy in their lives. Look at Marilyn Monroe - she was “the most wanted woman in the world,” yet the night she died, she couldn’t get anyone to talk to her on the phone! John Lennon was able to put it down, and be a family guy baking bread, when he finally had familial intimacy.

I will have to read this study to see if it considers the disintegration of the family into single-parent or “blended” units, or the “both parents working, here is your “quality” half-hour of “together time” before you go to sleep, sweetie” phenomenon of the past 20-30 years. Because that could well be a factor.

We have now had several generations growing up with either missing parents or well-meaning but “barely-there” parents. A lot of what we learn regarding intimacy we learn from Mom and Dad and Grandma. If they’re barely in the picture, from whom will we learn it? The Nursery school teacher? If we have a society with intimacy issues (and I would define it thusly, rather than as loneliness issues), I’d wager it is because we have a society wherein intimacy has been pushed aside for the progressive lifestyle ideas which preclude learning the skill. The folks who are demanding free, government-provided child care are not helping society learn intimacy and interdependancy (even though - to be fair - in their minds, they really ARE, they believe they’re preaching “it takes a village” interdependancy - but that is not intimacy, that’s social duty, and social duty always ends up being humorless, perfuctory and expedient).

Another problem is that intimacy has been defined downward, especially for our young girls, to mean little more than a “hook-up.” This is something Buster talks to me about. Children, but especially girls, are being sexualized at ever-earlier ages. The sexual messages begin very young in television commercials and on the clothes-store racks, and most of Buster’s generation grew up watching Friends and Sex in the City and thinking that this was what life was: a series of sexual encounters with no emotional attachments, no repercussions, no pain, no loss of oneself.

Sexualized early, many girls are either overly jaded or mistrustful and remote. Buster says a troubling number of girls his age are sexually hyper-active, but unhappy and lonely - they cannot make good, healthy connections with respectable young men, because they don’t “get” the guys who open car doors for them and who look for a relationship to be about more than a “hook-up” or perfunctory oral sex. (A romance recently busted up because Buster wanted a real relationship, and the girl, a nice-enough kid, simply did not know what that meant!)

While the girls are untethered and confused balls of sexuality, too many boys are learning to see the girls not as young women to be respected, admired and (in a chivalrous sense) looked after, but as disposable spitoons for their disregarded and misunderstood sperm. I’ve heard my sons and his friends complain about it - that their generation is very screwed up about how to relate to each other, that too many of both gender have no idea what self-respect is, that they treat themselves, and each other, badly. They crave intimacy but have no idea how to achieve it when they’ve been raised to throw everything - their virginity, their standards, their drive to succeed (it’s not cool to get good grades) - their potential, their very selves away. You cannot learn or achieve intimacy if you’re busy conforming to the Culture of Now - what Flip Wilson used to call The Church of What’s Happening Now - you’re too busy just trying to keep up.

This is not an overnight problem, it’s yet another fruit of the sexual revolution and the world-tilting sixties - the overcorrection to the 1950’s.

Meyer makes the excellent point that “In primitive and survival-dependent societies, social isolation was basically impossible.” True. When my husband and I were growing up, Grandma lived upstairs and auntie down the street, cousins all over the place and that mattered, but I don’t think that’s really the issue. I think this study is quite right that much of it is a matter of time and the incessant demands of the beeper, the cell phone, the freaking unending email (my husband literally has nightmares about the non-stop email at work that keeps him from full productivity, and sometimes keeps him stuck answering it all night instead of interacting with us). The demands of the workplace, and the fact that the work day no longer begins at 9 AM but as soon as the first cell-call rings through as you step out of the shower, may well be unhinging and destructively distracting us, as perhaps illustrated in this horrific story. It could well be that the work-demands are so out-of-control that when people finally end their work day they say, “just leave me alone, and give me a little space, fer cryin’ out loud!”

But I think there may be other trends which answer this worrisome report and can provide some reassurance and reason for optimism. Last year we read, to the horror of many feminists, about the growing number of women - ivy leaguers and others - who were actively planning to leave their careers and the work force for set periods of time to have and raise children. They were including parenting in the career plans, being smart enough to recognise that if they wanted kids, they’d want to raise them, themselves. It goes without saying, they were also hoping to marry men who could help them achieve that goal. Sometimes both parents must work, but more and more we’re seeing younger parents decide that one parent will stay home while the kids are young or - as with my nephew and neice - working in shifts so that the kids are always in the charge of one parent, rather than assorted sitters and caretakers. And now - just like back in the day - Grandma is moving in with them. The pendulum swings.

If there is going to be a correction to all of this mad fruit of the “do your own thing” era, it will take TIME and undoubtedly it will anger some who insist that any correction is a dramatic over-correction. But I don’t doubt there will be a correction of some sort. Humans need each other, we will find a way back. Intimacy can be re-learned and re-captured, and it will happen on a parent’s knee, or through a Grandfather’s gentle wisdom.

Related:
The Unstoppable Allure in an Ironic Age.
Maureen Dowd Asks a Question