On Richmond and Loving
There are cities on their way up, and cities on their way down, and then there is Richmond: perpetually imagining herself as most assuredly one or the other and never really changing. Any powerful flux here is entirely contained in avid speculation: the rush of imaginings and the eventual, inevitable, maddening return to herself as she simply is, like someone trying on clothes for hours, only to leave a store with nothing more than a potent dissatisfaction with her original outfit.
She is a city of failed slogans, ill-considered or just ill-timed. It didn't take any great wit to see the potential for irony in hanging “Easy to Love” banners above the heads of the busiest prostitutes in the city. But every year there seems to be another effort to sum up the best of all the city wishes she were in five words or less, and by August, when the banners have the unmistakable look of mold along their edges, someone is surely thinking of the next one, because what else can we do? How else to convey this strange stasis but to pretend we are always fast-approaching some kind of radical change.
Before reality shows became their own industry, in those innocent days when one could still glimpse actual discomfort in the faces of the participants, they were often caught saying, “I'm the kind of person who...”, so much so that it proved to be a fairly effective drinking game. There they were, suddenly very much on television, nothing but the evershifting blobs of post-adolescence, and their job was to take the potential richness of their interior lives and distill it to a bullet point on their emotional resume. I'm the kind of person who is just really honest; people need to get used to it and stop talking shit about me. I'm the kind of person who really sees the good in people, and if Delilah can't see that she's a fucking bitch. Then they would join a threesome.
Richmond is an early 90s reality show participant: I'm the kind of person who is Easy to Love! I'm the kind of person who is Up and Coming! -- then Richmond spends the most of the episode trying to get the Performing Arts Center and the Convention Center into bed, and is finally found by the cameraman and the sound guy, drunk and crying in the hallway, going on and on about how no matter what she does no one will ever let her forget that the city schools are falling down. Maybe I just need another slogan, and another center, maybe a business center. I'm the kind of person who really likes business...
We were going to move and now were are staying, voluntarily. Now we have chosen Richmond for a second time; we've really picked this place, and I think that must mean I love it. Richmond is not easy to love. Loving Richmond is like loving an alcoholic ... hard. But this is our city. It hurt to think of leaving, so we stayed. I'm not sure when this loving begin. Goddammit.
She is a city of failed slogans, ill-considered or just ill-timed. It didn't take any great wit to see the potential for irony in hanging “Easy to Love” banners above the heads of the busiest prostitutes in the city. But every year there seems to be another effort to sum up the best of all the city wishes she were in five words or less, and by August, when the banners have the unmistakable look of mold along their edges, someone is surely thinking of the next one, because what else can we do? How else to convey this strange stasis but to pretend we are always fast-approaching some kind of radical change.
Before reality shows became their own industry, in those innocent days when one could still glimpse actual discomfort in the faces of the participants, they were often caught saying, “I'm the kind of person who...”, so much so that it proved to be a fairly effective drinking game. There they were, suddenly very much on television, nothing but the evershifting blobs of post-adolescence, and their job was to take the potential richness of their interior lives and distill it to a bullet point on their emotional resume. I'm the kind of person who is just really honest; people need to get used to it and stop talking shit about me. I'm the kind of person who really sees the good in people, and if Delilah can't see that she's a fucking bitch. Then they would join a threesome.
Richmond is an early 90s reality show participant: I'm the kind of person who is Easy to Love! I'm the kind of person who is Up and Coming! -- then Richmond spends the most of the episode trying to get the Performing Arts Center and the Convention Center into bed, and is finally found by the cameraman and the sound guy, drunk and crying in the hallway, going on and on about how no matter what she does no one will ever let her forget that the city schools are falling down. Maybe I just need another slogan, and another center, maybe a business center. I'm the kind of person who really likes business...
We were going to move and now were are staying, voluntarily. Now we have chosen Richmond for a second time; we've really picked this place, and I think that must mean I love it. Richmond is not easy to love. Loving Richmond is like loving an alcoholic ... hard. But this is our city. It hurt to think of leaving, so we stayed. I'm not sure when this loving begin. Goddammit.
posted by Southern Bellow at 1:40 PM
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