On Death, TV and Death on TV and a bunch of other things

When learning a new language, each word is only understood with its counterpart in your own native tongue. “Amor” can’t be “love” until you are told what it means and your brain turns it over - LOVE is AMOR.  After studying some, you get the hang of the language, some words even make their way into the part of your brain that just knows and requires no translation.  "Amor" no longer sounds foreign and two lovers kissing at sunset under a tree in a park is no less love when it's called amor.  The two step process that was once necessary is replaced by understanding.  And you really know it when you start to dream in the language.  French was like that for me.  I struggled to learn abstract words and conjugations.  It was only when my parents sent me abroad (am I allowed to link to my last post?  Is there a blogosphere rule against that? Fuck it.)  for an intensive immersion course that the language started to make sense; the kind of sense where you don’t hesitate, where you are able to laugh in that new language, understand nuance and eventually, if you are lucky, fit in.

Attempt at understanding Spain, one tapa at a time.

Culture can be a lot like that.  You can learn about Spain by watching Bunuel films, reading Lorca, and eating gambas a la plancha, but you won’t truly understand why the Basque kids run around in kefiyahs and set trash cans on fire until you understand the why of their protest.  You can watch a Michele Haneke film and believe you understand why there are riots in the Parisian banlieues, but you really wont get it, truly get it, until you are getting punched in the face on Bastille Day by a gang of Algerian hoodlums angry at something much bigger than you.  (That actually happened to me.)  To immerse yourself in a culture, and to let it all in, good or bad, is the only way you gain an understanding that reaches the level where you stop the translating and start really understanding.

Growing up in the US, you think you understand the UK.  In school you read Wuthering Heights, memorize Keats, and act in shitty renditions of King Lear.  After school you played Morrissey on your cassette player and loved every new James Bond flick.  In politics, you heard about America’s great friendship with the UK and attempted to understand the parliamentary system.  You never did get it, but you still felt some sort of kinship with the British.  If you’ve never been to England,  you might think hoity toity-ness and royal pomp and circumstance permeate every nook and cranny, like melting butter on an English muffin.  Its all wedgewood china and sliver platters and la dee dah.  Even if you visit for a week, on spring break, you might not rid yourself of these delusions.  

And then you meet Jade Goody. 

Boobs with my morning coffee

The day I met Jade was the day I finally started really, truly, understanding England.  In a way that stopped me dead in my tracks, because with Jade, there was no translation.  I'd read about her in the papers, the kind with topless ladies on page three.  I’d heard about her antics from the season she spent in the  Big Brother house, that was about it.  But then I had my first conversation with her and my mind was blown.  All of the sudden I UNDERSTOOD. Here is England and that’s entertainment.  In an updated version of that Paul Weller song, he might mournfully mention Jade, her miserable childhood, her rise to fame and her made for tv dying days.  A new England, a new brand of entertainment.

 if you like this stuff you are probably homeless

But I wasn't looking for new England.... I was working, out of a talent agency,  as a personal assistant to a maniac.  In that office alone, every faction of English society reported for duty, from the iconoclast agency owner, to his array of agents.  The receptionist was this crazy fucker from Leeds who was a cross between Pee-Wee Herman and Alice Cooper.  The accountant was  a weed smoking pervert with tourettes and a tendency towards spiraling depression.  The publicist, as sweet as she seemed, was an obsessive compulsive snake charmer with a thin smile.  And then there was the client list.  Along with various colorful reality television personalities was Jade Goody.

She was a real money maker and as silly as she was, she had an ignorant-charming thing the English public ate up.  But it all came undone when Jade re-entered the Big Brother house, this time as a celebrity.  She called one of the other "contestants" -the Bollywood actress, Shilpa Shetty - "Shilpa Poppadom" and made further statements that can only be described as thick-as-fuck.  Although it seemed benign at the time,  it was easy to intuit that Jade had just messed up.  It wasn’t just the story you saw on the surface…Reality-Star-Says-Something-Stupidly-Racist.  It was so much more than that.  All that context, from Jade's own history to the history of the English Empire, had to be taken into account.  That shit ran deep.

Soon after all this transpired, Jade with the help of the agency, went on publicity overdrive.  She gushed apologies and worked to save her career. She even went to India to atone.  Gordon Brown apologized to Indian parliment on behalf of England for her deeds.  Needless to say, it was a big deal.

In the midst of all this, I went to a client's wrap party at the BBC TV Centre in White City.  It was for a shitty talk show and Jade had been a guest that evening.  Sitting with Jade, you couldn’t help but notice how much softer she looked in person. All the tabloids that had branded her as "piggy" were so entirely off the mark.  She was almost pretty.  Dimples appeared when she smiled, her eyes bright, her lips full. She was very slim and dressed conservatively.  She could have fit in anywhere, that is until she opened her mouth.  She leaned over to me and said in the cockneyest of cockney, “oi, look over there”, following her pointing finger with my eyes, I found two women heavily making out.  We watched them for a minute and when it started to get really hot, like hands errr'where, Jade squealed with glee.   She then said words that forever will ring in my ears...till the day I die, I think.  "Can you believe it? Feeding the goat at the BBC." 

"Get it?", she asked, "Feeding the goat." What the fuck does that mean?  I didn't know.  And then she sort of mimicked feeding a goat - cupped hands, in the vicinity of her nether regions. "Oh, of course", I said. And then she laughed and laughed and laughed.  And repeated it with disbelief about a dozen times.  At the end of the evening, I walked down the halls looking for my ride. I was weighed down with gifts and random shit.  I put down some gifted bottles of red wine, wrapped in wrapping paper, and went to fetch more things in another room.  When I came back, they were gone. A PA, passing by, told me she'd just seen Jade walk by carrying them.  I found her in the lobby, waiting for her car with her twinkish boyfriend, Jack Tweed.  I pointed at the still wrapped bottles in her arms and told her they were mine. "Why'd you take them?" I asked.  She just laughed and said "I can't help it, its in my blood."  Her driver called for her and with that she left, no further explanation given.  With the bottles of wine.  In that moment I was aware that I had gained insight on not only Jade, but the entirety of England.  I had cracked the code. That maybe, just maybe, I was one step further than understanding...I was actually fitting in. 

perplexed & drinking beer on Brick Lane

But I wasn't.  

Almost 4 years I lived in that country and never once did I fit in.  Met some great people, but let's just say I never really dreamed in British.  A few years after I moved back home, news of Jade's death trickled over.  She had cameras following her while she battled cervical cancer.  And had cameras on her when she found out she was terminal.  I am not sure the cameras were there when she actually died. Possibly. She wasn't the equivalent of Paris Hilton or Anna Nicole Smith or Snookie; the media here, not really knowing how to translate her to 'merican, kinda reported it wrong and inadequately.

God knows why I'm thinking of Jade Goody today and really it may be this incessant rain that's getting me all morbid, but I've been thinking about death a lot lately.  And with all of that, I've been thinking about the things that make us different, including language, culture, taste and the lack thereof. And chief among those differences - the amount of money in our wallets.  All depresso, I realize more and more that it's impossible to ever truly understand one another.   

But you know what?  Not everyone will speak Cantonese, and not everyone understands Cockney, but everyone understands Brown Bread. That's Cockney for 'dead'.  We'll walk through that exit door sooner or later and everyone understands that language.  And I guess we also all come through the same entrance, so to speak.  It's all that stuff in the middle that fucks us up.  If we just sort of remember that everyone shares those two things, that we were all born and we will all die, and its all so fucking precious, at least we'll have that.  And some shared humanity in a place we can all fit in.  

And Jade - if you can see this not-so-pithy blog up in reality TV heaven...I can't believe you stole my wine.  I mean even after I TOLD you it was mine.  Just walked out laughing.

Sheesh.