Let ‘em Eat Cake

            Two girls walk into Take Five Coffee Lounge, they order drinks, and one of them a piece of pie.  They sit down at a table near me, and start discussing cake.  I like cake, most of us do.  One of them is getting her wedding cake made at this coffee shop.  She describes the cake to her friend.  She brings up her married friends cakes that she has seen on Facebook, and notes that most of them had grooms cakes while she will not.  They joke that a groom’s cake sounds like it should be at the bachelor party.  They talk about her plans for the bachelor party.  I finish my coffee, then get up and leave.

            There are a couple of parts of this conversation that I find interesting.  The first one is when she mentions her married Facebook friends.  In the world of Facebook we get to share just how wonderful our lives are with as much photographic evidence as we can procure, and in the case of weddings, that’s usually a lot of evidence.  In this situation, this abundance of documentation was creating a sense of competition.  She was speaking to her unmarried friend who, due to her relationship status, is obviously not a contender.  Yet she was in it to win it.  She was organizing her attack.  She was feeling out her competition.  She was carefully managing her resources to be able to post the best Facebook wedding pictures she could.  Since she couldn’t afford a grooms cake, she wrote it off as silly and a non-traditional extravagance.

            The second part of the conversation that struck me as interesting is when they began discussing her plans for the bachelor party.  When asked what he was doing for the bachelor party she responded, “I was thinking maybe he and his friends could hang out at our house and play beer pong, then us girls could catch up with them later and we could all party together.”  This desire for control and limited mobility of his bachelor party shows a lack of trust and a level of insecurity.  A bachelor party is intended to be a last hoorah, time with the boys, and a ceremonial end to the bachelor lifestyle.  If she is unwilling to allow him this freedom, she obviously doesn’t trust him.

            These, of course are only assumptions that I have made based on a few lines of exchanged dialogue, overheard one day and written about the next.  Perhaps she only brought up Facebook because she needed a point of reference from which to even speak of this new concept of a groom’s cake.  Perhaps her partner really likes to stay in and play beer pong with his friends, and she is only suggesting the things she believes will truly make him happy.

Going Native

            In her essay “Going Native” Francine Prose gives several examples of individuals who chose to identify themselves with a culture that does not belong to them.  She starts with examples that cast the practice in a negative light, but by the end of the essay she seems to conclude that it is a means of stirring the melting pot.

            I think she fails to make a distinction between “going native” and becoming a native.  The examples she casts in a negative light would be examples of going native.  While the positive experience of truly adopting a different culture would be becoming a native.

After a short exposure to a new or different culture it is easy to “go native,” and adopt practices and ideas that are appealing.  In order to “go native” one must find themselves in a location where there is a distinguishable group of people who have been there longer, observe one or more of their practices, and then adopt those practices as their own.  It may or may not even involve location.  It is possible to “go native” for a place one has never even been to.

To become a native in a different experience altogether.  It involves a true understanding of all of the practices and principals associated with a local group.  It cannot be based on a few simple observations.  It involves location and understanding.  It can only come with time and dedication.  Only after genuinely understanding and truly adopting a different culture as one’s own, can one become native.

Premature or misguided attempts to become native would fall into the category of going native.  I would go so far as to say any attempt to become native would fall into the category of going native; for becoming native is not something one tries to do

Tanana River

            David Mollett tells the story of standing in the back room of his gallery while a show of his work was hung on the wall.  A patron walks in and says, “Ah, this is a Mollett, never much cared for his work, not much of a blender.”  The point of telling the story to his class is to take advantage of honest critique while you can get it, because rarely will you hear someone speak their mind about your work.  The truth is, he’s not much of a blender.  His bold use of line and lack of blending can be seen upstairs at the Museum of the North in his work, Tanana River. 

The painting depicts the Tanana River.  The Alaska Range can be seen in the background.  Piles of driftwood and the snaking river make up the foreground.  This work quickly caught my attention because I was able to identify it as a Mollett painting, I enjoy his style, and the depicted location brings back a flood of wonderful memories.

            David Mollett employs the liberal use of bold lines in his landscape paintings.  He lays down broad lines of color on top of planes of solid color to achieve a striking likeness.  Though quite simplified, his painting still holds a powerful unmistakable description of its subject.  The cooler tones of blue in the mountains and green in the boreal forest push the background farther into the distance, while the warmer tones of the logs and the sandbars reach out toward the viewer.  He uses his bold lines to guide the viewer throughout the canvas.  Logs point back and forth across the scene, and the river weaves its way slowly toward the mountains.  This painting is quite pleasant to view as you sit and contemplate how such a strong likeness of the location can be achieved from such simple lines.

            As I view this image I can’t help but recall the time I have spent on the banks of the Tanana River.  I think back on summer evenings spent cooling off by jumping in again and again.  I remember skipping rocks there, just to see how far they will go.  I think of the time my brother and I pushed one of those logs in, and rode it a short way in the current, taking turns trying to stand up and balance on it.  It is a place that holds very fond memories for me.  These are the first feelings I have.  As I look longer, I start to think more of its technical merits and feel a deep respect for the man who painted it.  I see some of the things he teaches in his painting, and I feel fortunate to be his student.