To all my American friends and family who live nowhere, the flyby states, those places where nothing, we are taught, happens. I came across this Guardian interview with Wendell Berry, and he as always puts it perfectly. //Port Royal [Kentucky] is what a lot of people have been schooled to call “nowhere.” I remember a college student who told me, “I’m from a little nowhere place in Illinois.” And I said, ”Wait a minute. I want to ask you something: Who told you that where you come from in Illinois is nowhere? There is no such place as nowhere.” We’ve dumped our garbage in our places, we’ve polluted them and mistreated them in every way, because we thought they were nowhere. It’s extremely important, it seems to me, that those nowhere places should be inhabited by people who will speak for them.// Im guilty too, of course. Now, apparently, if you ask its inhabitants, I live somewhere indeed. Nobody ever calls Glasgow or Scotland nowhere; it is in fact one of the most robust somewheres Ive ever known. It isnt particularly big, but it is all so heartily *a place* in the global imagination. (Not that a lot of Americans really understand it beyond the ubiquitous kilts and bagpipes image.) Mostly its cabbies I say it to, when asked where Im from, nowhere, just a little town in central Kentucky. I should alter my language.
Posted on: Thu, 01 Jan 2015 11:29:44 +0000
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