COMMON MORTALS
You can’t make this up!
WHEN YOU MOVE to a new country, there’s a certain question that is asked ad nauseum. At first you relish answering it, taking your time to paint a vivid picture for your listeners, exagerating your accent and laying on the colloquialisms until you end up sounding like Crocodile Dundee. What I’m referring to is a statement followed by a question: “I love your accent! Where is it from?”
Now, it may seem like an exaggeration when I say everybody you meet abroad asks this, but it’s not because the question extends into its realm of infinite variables. If they don’t ask you directly, they’ll comment on it, they compliment it, they mimic it. The only thing that seems impossible is for them to fucking ignore it. After the novelty of this attention wore off a few months into my time in New York City, I spoke with Joey about it.
“Why the fuck does everybody have to ask me about my accent?! I just want to have a conversation where I don’t have to tell my entire life story to a stranger.”
“Ha ha, ‘stranger’. You say that funny. Strangeahhh. It’s kind of like you drop off into satisfaction at the end of the word.”
“I’m serious dude,” I replied, making sure I didn’t fall into any linguistic lulls.
“If you’re bored telling them about where you’re from, why don’t you just make something up?”
If my life were a cheesy movie, this would be the point I break the fourth wall, turn to face the face camera and give it a little wink. Klara and I were standing in the smoker’s area of The Standard, feverishly discussing how she had also been suffering this very same aff liction. I asked what she thought about adapting alteregos and she absolutely loved the idea. I’m a man of planning and action, wanting to completely discuss what our new personas would be, their back stories, fears, turn-ons and the like. Before I knew it, a stranger had approached her for a light and she was mid-conversation in an impressive Russian accent.
“… and we will play Bowery Ballroom next week, but we are very bored of this city. It’s not crazy like we thought.” She turned to me and said, “This is my brother, Vladimir.”
I shook his hand. “Pleased to meet you,” I attempted. When I saw that my poor Russian accent wasn’t met with laughter, I continued.
“Anya,” I named Klara, “you cannot speak of da Americans like this to their faces. You must forgive her, she is simply upset because American vodka is not as good as back in Moscow.”
As the night rolled on and my confidence mixed with courage, we assumed these personas when ordering drinks, requesting songs from the DJ, even during the cab ride when we sung one of our “latest hits” for the driver. I’m sure the alcohol made the memory of the song far more impressive than it actually was, but as Russian comedian Yakov Smirnoff notes: “In Soviet Russia, the song sings you.” Standing in the shoe section during a quiet day working at Opening Ceremony, I was patiently awaiting customers to walk through the door so I could assume another alter ego, almost willing them to challenge me on the authenticity of my elaborate claims.
A couple walked in and I served them, awaiting the question. True to form, they asked me where I was from and why I was in New York.
“I have a new exhibit at the MoMa PS1,” I replied without missing a step. They stood there, profoundly stunned by the momentous lie and the lie sat there lingering in the still air, mixing with the ambiance of the ’90s hip hop music playing through the shops speakers.
“That’s incredible!” they broke the silence. “What are you doing there?”
Now, before I go on, I need to say that I think there’s a significant disconnect in Americans’ minds. They are both dazzled by the foreign accent and convinced that I’ve chosen to live in New York due to creative pursuits so that anything that’s part of the artistic scene is plausible, no matter how profoundly grandiose.
“I’m a continuous line contour illustrator. I draw entire images without looking down at the paper. So the installation at the museum is a performance of sorts. My friend plays saxophone solos while I draw his music. My illustrations are projected on the wall next to us. We do it for about four hours, four days of the week.” They were breathless, “You draw his music?!” I brushed it off as something commonplace, “Yeah, his music, his emotions, anything that I can see that extends beyond his physical form.” They told me that they will come and see my next performance and we made plans as two distant friends who accidently bump into each other make plans to have a coffee the following week. Neither of us were being genuine about it (me, for obvious reasons), but we enjoyed the interaction nonetheless. When the adoptation of these alter egos began, it was used in excess. Every single time I was out I would be someone different. But as time passed and the stories became more and more elaborate, I found that I was in the same predicament as when I first started. The expectation and effort to tell the story was still there, only the content had changed.
One day, I was asked the question again and I told the truth: I was an Australian who had uprooted his life to move to the big city to pursue his dream of writing. When it was met with the same level of interest as a Russian musician or an artist savant I realised that it was still a really impressive story to tell. It was at that point that I decided I would continue to tell the truth behind my existence in the Big Apple to anyone who would ask.
But I’m not making any promises. I mean, after one too many shots of vodka, Vladimir has a tendency to take over.