America has lost its charm for me.
It really has.
I've always been a person who, admittedly, can obsess over random things over periods of time -- I'll be fixated upon this for a while, then be fixated upon that afterwards, and this is how it goes.
But as I was listening to The Used's "A Box Full of Sharp Objects," with Bert McCracken's howling vocals and the heavy guitar and drums in the background and a beautiful melody raging throughout the song, I suddenly realized that, had The Used been an English band, and they were screaming and frenzying the way in the same way, I would have been more charmed.
In my opinion, I'm thinking like that because I think like that with BMTH and BFMV. They're both UK bands. And even though I consider BMTH a tad too pissed-sounding for me, I still do listen to them. (And FYI, it's not because of how the lead singer looks. I'm serious.)
And one of the reasons I listen to them, especially BMTH, is because they're not American. If they were American, I possibly would not have bothered giving them my time to listen to them scream and howl.
Don't get me wrong. I don't have anything against America. I'm not at all Caucasian myself, so this is not a case of racism. It's just that, for me, something English, something from the United Kingdom -- these things just have more poise, more elegance. English things remind me of quaintness. English things conjure up an image of gentlemen and ladies sipping tea in intricately tailored clothes, inside a sepia photo. English things make of think of grey skies, wet after-rain streets. English things sound in my head a proud, elegant, strong way of speaking, while the American accent just sounds cheap, vulgar, edge-less, fat: it's like comparing a gentlewoman to a soccer mom. English things are tantamount, for me, to all things vintage.
I know the way I speak of those things are making them seem fantastic. In truth, I know they're not that perfect, but human minds have a way of perfecting things in their mind. But I digress.
I have been to the UK. So it's not like I'm imagining all that up in my head baselessly.
____
Going back to the title: American has lost its charm for me. Why? and how? you may ask. Well, as for why -- that I cannot answer. My change of heart, to me, is quite unfathomable just as it is to you. As for how -- that I can answer.
I don't know why, but now, I don't think about immigrating to America anymore. I think about moving to the UK. Or even Canada. But America - no longer. That wish has slipped from me like a ring of cigarette smoke, fading slowly but surely. I used to obsess over living in America, even though I've never been there. I just had a very strong wish to live there in the future. I've always had that wish in my head. It stuck there for quite a long period of time. And the notion of it going away -- that never even occurred to me.
But now it did. I don't want to live there anymore. I don't want to go to school there. I don't give a shit about the Californian sunshine and sand, or Harvard in the winter wonderland up north, or anything anywhere else.
Instead, I found myself fantasizing about things like the Tower Bridge. Or record shops, and books shops, like Waterstones. Or London's narrow streets. Or strange, exotic proper nouns, ending with -ham or -cester or -minster or -shire. Or conversing with people who speak with so graceful an accent that it pains me to think of my own, lacking in aesthetic charm and beauty. The
American accent: sounds of a language twisted into a lowly effigy of the original.
I suppose, the conclusion I got from my reasoning is just that I favor English things over American things. Perhaps this is a strange notion, especially for me myself, who speaks English with an American accent and goes to an American International School. Huh.
Labels: america, charm, england, uk, united states, usa
