A quick post to say that a recent episode of the NPR Podcast Invisibilia served as an excellent primer to my upcoming adventure. The episode, titled Reality, has several segments but one of the most relevant was about a Google employee who created a randomizer for Facebook events that gave him a party or meeting or some other gathering to attend every week. This has led to an entire lifestyle that includes randomizing everything from music habits to food selection - a really interesting way to help get him out of his bubble. So much of this project is about that for me. I feel sure of what I know and believe. I don't think everyone who disagrees with me is stupid or uneducated or hoodwinked. I'm sure there are complications and angles I can't see from inside my version of the world. My greatest hope is to pierce my bubble and little and to do the same in return.
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I depart Thursday for my first stop in Cimarron County, Oklahoma. It is the furthest west county in the Oklahoma panhandle and the least populated with just about 1200 people in the county seat of Boise City (pronounced "boys city", I'm told). One of the most striking differences (besides racial and ethic diversity) might be population density. Cimarron County has less than 2 people per square mile while New York City has about 17,000 residents in that same average space. In the 2016 election Cimarron County voted 89.2% for Donald Trump with 6.6% voting for Hillary Clinton. Compare that with my home in Brooklyn where 79.5% of people voted for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump received 17.5% of the vote. I've had some excellent help from people in the community working to connect with with residents and business owners. Everyone from the local paper to the heritage center to the County Clerk have passed along my info, offered advice, or even posted my contact details in the local paper and encouraged folks to reach out. I'll be spending 4th of July weekend there and am hoping that will provide a chance to meet some people I might not otherwise cross paths with during my trip. Before I depart I'm spending a bit of time this Wednesday in Union Square here in New York City asking strangers about their expectations, impressions, and experience of these parts of the country. If you want to join me on Wednesday just reach out, I'd be happy to have some company before I depart. I'll be sure to check in along the way. In the last few weeks as I interviewed people in New York about their expectations about what I'll experience, several folks offered books, documentaries, and television shows where others followed a similar impulse.
I just finished reading Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right by Arlie Russell Hochschild. The book describes Hochschild's many visits to Louisiana over the past few years investigating how citizens so harmed by pollution from major corporations could also be so against environmental regulations that could protect them. The narrative reveals a "deep story" of these citizens that unmasks underlying beliefs and perceptions, demystifying the seeming paradox. It's a great read and substantially altered the questions I have about life in these counties and how that life intersects with politics and citizenship. Other friends and colleagues offered Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance, the CNN program United Shades of America with W. Kamau Bell, and the great article from The New Yorker back in February 2016 "Who Are All These Trump Supporters?" by George Saunders. I'm enjoying all these, but there are moments where they feel like a kind of academic or intellectual armor I'm putting on to prepare for... what exactly? Lunch? I think I'm more nervous than I'm admitting. I want to understand before my trip rather than using the trip to gain understanding. I'm treating my potential hosts as though they are a rarely interacted with society on some remote island and yet every person I speak to about the trip has a relative or high school friend who lives in a small town or they themselves grew up somewhere like this. These fellow citizens aren't "foreign" or unknown. They're the people we see over Thanksgiving. Perhaps the fact that we share so much with them and they still don't see things the way we do makes them even more mystifying. |
AuthorScott Illingworth is an Assistant Arts Professor in the Graduate Acting Program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and a freelance theatre director. Archives
July 2017
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