you-hoo-hooooo may say i'm a pessimist, but i'm not the only one...

this might seem alarming i think the john lennon song "imagine" is pretty depressing.

i know i am probably not the go-to source for trenchant insights into widely popular, yet, sadly, misunderstood songs*, but i think everyone has been looking at this song the wrong way.

guaranteed, if you and a group of your close friends, kin or a mixture thereof are sitting around and this song comes on, someone will inevitably remark about how idealistic and beautiful it is. if they don't say it out loud, one or more of them are definitely thinking it. because john is an excellent songwriter, you unconsciously do what he commands you to - imagine this utopian world he's thinking of. a brotherhood of man? who can really argue with that. sounds pretty awesome.

i think it's pretty much accepted that john was the token idealistic songwriter of the 60s/70s, but i think if he's worth his snuff, there's got to be more to this song than the simple, idealistic message of "can't we all just get along?"

he starts listing all the things that we'd have to take out of the equation in order to achieve this perfect world. so basically we're getting rid of possessions, countries, religion (including heaven and hell**), and consequently, things that we kill or die for, greed, hunger, and the negative side effects of living as though your fate is fixed.

but is the price worth the reward? i mean, yeah... this world would be awesome. but it would also be boring. these Utopians would have nothing to fight about or hate each other for, yes, but they'd also have nothing*** to talk about.

maybe this sounds ridiculous, but does he REALLY want to give up all of that, or expect anyone else to want to? i think no. and that's why this song is depressing and genius.

so he never actually uses the word "utopia" but that's what we're getting at here, i think, and while i was looking up the adjective form of the word (because apparently, in order for blogger to accept it, you have to capitalize it... even if you are not specifically describing Sir Thomas More's Utopia. idiots.) i stumbled on the etymology of the word, which i didn't know but maybe you did. it comes from the Greek words that mean "not" and "a place" so basically it means "nowhere."

so this perfect world is actually nowhere - it's some place we'll never find, which is one layer of sad. on top of that, to get it, we'd have to give up everything that makes most people's lives bearable. and so even if we could eliminate all those things, we probably never would.

which, to me, is fucking depressing. but maybe i'm the pessimist.



*but, doesn't make me any less right about "california girls."

**i read somewhere that at the airport in liverpool are written the words "above us only sky," which might be the best side effect of this song. this and FC's slogan of "you'll never walk alone" have me convinced that liverpool might be the coolest place ever. it's like those kids that write song lyrics and quotes all over their book covers... except they wrote them on their city. liverpudlians are awesome. and they're called liverpudlians! i love it.

***although, john neglects to mention getting rid of global warming, which would surely cause these Utopians some unforseen conflict.

speed friendship

prague is a city full of transients. as far as the expat community goes, anyway. you'll find the occasional lifer, and a handful of 6-10 year residents, but for the most part, the people you meet are usually at some stage of on their way out.

a year ago i would never have thought i'd stay in prague longer than the end of the school year. in fact, when i first got here, i thought staying a month would be difficult.

now that it's official (i'm staying, at this point, indefinitely), i have to watch as all the friends i've made leave, one at a time. as everyone prepares to leave and i prepare to stay... it's time to make some new friends.

so we've employed a new tactic... speed friendship. it's pretty straightforward. you meet someone new and instead of awkward small talk and promises of future get-togethers that may or may not go unfulfilled, you immediately become best friends. because when you, or your new friend, might be leaving at any time, there's no time to waste.

we met our new friend pavel a little over two weeks ago. it was a Chat Boy's/Fatteau night* and we were dragging from Lucerna the night before (being unemployed in the summer leaves a lot of time and not much to do... so we get drunk). just as we were about to split, marie strolled up with pavel. we'd met him before, briefly, at the beer garden, but never really spent any time with him. that would soon change.

we were out until sun up (which, to be fair, isn't saying much when the sun rises at 4:30 am), got to mcdonalds so early (late?) that they weren't serving breakfast yet, and caught the first metro home.

"y'all want to go to the pool tomorrow?" pavel said as we parted ways at JZP. (he really meant "today." also, despite his czech name, he grew up in Georgia. so that should explain the y'alls.)

so a few hours later, we dragged ourselves in a hungover stupor down to the riverside to sunbathe. then we went out to dinner. then we went to akropolis for reggae night... and stayed out until sun up. again.

we saw pavel almost everyday that week, because that's what speed friendship requires. after less than 14 days, it's like we've been friends for years.

with anna and lori leaving in exactly two weeks (YIKES), all new friendships have got to be speed friendships. and it's fun. we started another speed friendship with tom, a guy we met wandering around in bratislava. at 2 pm we were introducing ourselves on the street, and by 6pm we were chipping in for a bottle of becherovka for the bus ride home.

i don't have a good conclusion for this post, as usual. i am the SNL of blogs. anyway, point is... watch out for us on the street. you may be the next victim of speed friendship.




*Chat Boy's and Fatteau are code names for two bars, Fat Boy's and Chateau, that are frequented by expats. They are on the same street, and situated in such a way that patrons of one bar often migrate to the other bar, sometimes with a drink in hand. if you say "let's go to Chat Boy's tonight" you are indicating that you'd like to go to Fat Boy's and then possibly to Chateau, or somewhere in between.