Lightbulb Over Head Blog

It has been a long time since I last felt patriotic. The sound of “Proud to be an American” makes my skin crawl and decidedly ashamed to be an American.

That feeling of my stomach turning is so far from the joy I got from marching in the Memorial Day Parade in Chicago as a child. I would innocently dress up my pink, purple, and white tricycle with red, white, and blue streamers. I remember my mom and dad twisting the small silver wires to make a white dove with real feathers bought from some arts and craft store roost beneath my seat. It was truly a glorious vehicle to behold.

We would march, ride, rollerblade, and walk through the city with drums rat-a-tat-tatting all the way the way to the park. They thundered so loudly in your heart and when you closed your mouth, you could feel the sonic vibrations in your teeth. Additionally, I remember these colorful packs of jelly candies that they gave out every year when we got to our final destination in the park. They did acrobatics and someone important gave a speech. That was always the boring bit as a child, but I was way too busy eating my jelly candy and giggling with my friends from the neighborhood to care much.

I also have fond memories of going to Connecticut in the summertime to celebrate 4th of July with my father’s side of the family. Our current patriarch, my dad’s oldest brother Jack, invited every member of our clan to his house for the weekend and we would set up a volley ball net and I would swing on the swing that hung from the massive branch of the  giant oak tree out front. There was also a fish pond in the backyard and a big log that I would climb across and pretend that it was the gateway to another world. We would cook burgers and laugh and when the evening settled down, we would all watch a classic movie like Sunset Boulevard or Psycho. It was a time to feel the love of family and reunite and refresh. It almost felt like New Year’s Eve in the sense that I sort of measured my childhood years by the arrival of the 4th of July.

As I grew older, these small acts of patriotism faded. I grew out of my tricycle. The Connecticut house burned down. I began going to summer camp in North Carolina and I simply began to loath family dinner parties and the baggage of having that one evening to give people information and updates on my life by which they could measure my progress from the previous Thanksgiving or whenever we had spoken last. I enjoyed seeing people of course, but I always felt tremendous pressure. As an actress, I wanted to make my parents proud of what I was doing or I wanted to be seen as successful in an industry that is “hard” if not impossible.

My innocent idolatry of the red, white, and blue became like some distant memory.

The closest I came to patriotism was watching Independence Day when Bill Pullman gave the big speech before the epic battle with the Alien race that wants to take over Earth.

In that movie as a whole and especially during that speech, there is a collective sense of community and duty in the face of death. It connects American independence with the rest of the globe. I think I was attracted to it because as I was growing up, I really felt like America was an island. I was very blessed to be able to travel around the world to Italy, France, the United Kingdom, Ecuador, Turkey, and Greece. I was exposed to other views of America from outside of our borders. I remember that I was roaming the streets of Paris as a child and looking into the glass window of a Patisserie. The owner of the shop rushed out and ushered me away to my American parents who were just down the block finishing their French morning coffee and croissants. The shopowner was not happy to have some American child poking around his window and pushed me towards my father before stomping back up the street and into his store.

When I was doing a theater exchange with some students from England, they were very welcoming but wouldn’t stop pestering us about how in God’s green earth President George Bush had been re-elected. I had to remind them that none of us, who were in our junior and senior years of high school, were old enough to vote. However, nothing I said could assail them. They wanted to know how our country could have been so dumb.

As a liberally minded young American, I became increasingly upset at many of the topics brought into the spotlight during the Bush Administration. In my mind, so many of them were connected to religion. Many of the protests against gay marriage focused on the fact that the Bible “tells us” that marriage is specifically for a man and a woman. Whatever happened to the separation of church and state? Why should the Christian God dictate what our citizens of varying religions should do? So many Bible Thumpers were in arms over A Woman’s Right to choose. I agree that this is a sensative subject, but I just don’t think that anyone should be able to dictate what I can and can’t do with my body. The rate of teen pregnancy is increasing in our country and more and more and our young men and women are starting families before they are ready. On top of this, the administration wanted to stop stem cell research, research that could help to find a cure any number of diseases that our world faces. In a way, stem cell research gives new life to these “pre” humans by using them to advance our knowledge and understanding of the human body and the development of new medicines and treatments to help us thrive and save lives.

After 9/11, I was devastated just like everyone else. It was just such a horrible tragedy. I could try to quantify my emotions and the events that followed it, but that is not really the subject of this article. However I will say that somewhere inside of myself, there was a tug on the string of my patriotism. I think it would have blossomed if I hadn’t been overwhelmed by the mass marketing of everything blindly patriotic that poured from middle America. Perhaps I shouldn’t have looked down on it all, but honestly, as I said at the outset of this peice, the song “Proud to be An American” makes my stomach turn because it is so mind-numbingly broad. Words like freedom and liberty are so much a part of our collective conciousness that they begin to loose meaning with every use. I think we take them for granted as does that song. It employs almost every one and manages to fill up verses and choruses while actually not saying much of anything at all. America as a whole became so inarticulate after 9/11 that I became desensitized to the American flag. It was on bookbags, pins, T-shirts, miniflags, keychains- EVERYWHERE. The flag itself became a pop sensation. No wonder no one took us seriously. No one takes Britney Spears seriously.

Near the end of Sherman Edwards and Peter Stone’s musical, 1776, John Addams wonders on the eve of the signing of the Declaration of Independence if anyone sees America the way he does. I am including the lyrics here for anyone who has not seen the show. I am including the sequence here for your viewing pleasure.

I began to feel a bit like Addams in this number. “Is Anybody There? Does Anybody Care? Does Anyboy See What I See?” I saw the lifeblood of true America dying a little each day.  I saw our liberties being questioned and taken from us one by one.

This year, everything changed for me. Barack Obama was elected our 44th President of the United States of America. As a Chicagoan, I knew he was the man for the job almost immediately after I heard he was running. I knew it would be a hard road, but for the first time in a long time, I hung on to a hope for this country. I invested in current events and our national progress. Instead of writing off this war as an egregious nightmare created by the Bush Administration, I saw a man capable of ending our part in the turmoil and I what’s more, I listened and I felt connected to those lost, and those still fighting.

I know that in recent articles I have been disparaging about the spirit I sometimes feel while living in New York City. However, I haven’t mentioned that the true strength of our community sometimes shines so brightly that I am left gaping in awe. I have felt it several times, but I will tell you that on Election Night 2008, New York City came alive. Cars zipped through Bushwick in Brooklyn with loudspeakers chanting Obama’s name. People smiled at each other in the East Village and waved American flags not because thats what they were obligated to do to support our country but because they were moved to raise our country’s iconic colors. In Time’s Square, the lights shown with hope and triumph, and not with amusement park neon.

In his iconic speech from Election night 2008, Barck Obama reminded me that we are not a collection of red and blue states, but that we are forevermore the United States. I realize that I am capable of prejudice, that in this post I have called middle America uncultured, and called recent national patriotism into question. I have pointed many fingers. I know have a lot to learn and I am not saying that I don’t believe it can come from being exposed to opinions from other parts of our great Nation. But today.

Today we stand United. Today, I am proud to be an American. Today somebody is there. Today is our Independence Day.

This morning, I killed a man.

That’s a lie. I didn’t “kill” him, but for exactly three seconds after the following event transpired, I harbored murderous thoughts in my heart.

I was walking down the street and skipping to the next track on my iPhone when a man, who was apparently walking behind me, RAMMED into my left arm so roughly that I was shoved against the glass window of GNC on Lexington Avenue. Then, this man had the AUDACITY to glare at me and say “Watch it!” while motioning in a frantically pissed off fashion at the device in my hand. The man was older and had gray hair. He was certainly spry and didn’t carry a cane, but he had an undeniable crotchety quality.

Firstly, Sir, you approached from my rear. Even if I hadn’t been looking at my iPhone at that exact moment, I wouldn’t have seen you coming. “Why?” you ask. Well. Simply put, I don’t have eyes in the back of my head. If I did, they would be covered in hair. For those of you who are unaware of this fact, I have very long, very full brown hair.

So you know what, man? YOU WATCH IT.

Seriously, after this happened, there were three seconds where I could have killed him. If I hadn’t been regaining my balance at the time, I might have. Plus, as he stalked off, he walked BETWEEN a man holding the hand of his young daughter. That’s right. He’s a homewrecker.

That’s a lie.

He’s not a home wrecker, but what kind of man has the choice of the ENTIRE SIDEWALK and chooses to walk between two people, nay, a man and a child holding hands?

This incident reminded me of a time I was rushing to catch a train to class at NYU. I was transfering like I did every day. Pause. Let me tell you how much I hated this transfer. Firstly, its a long, sweaty, stupid transfer. It looped all around the underground station and I think everyone who had to transfer there hated it because from what I could tell, everyone looked like they were in the calvary in the movie Gladiator. They were bearing down with clenched eyes and brandishing their backpacks, briefcases, and umbrellas menacingly. Their mission was to make it to the platform and race up the stairs to the train. However, this was harder than one would think.

These stairs led to the Sophie’s Choice of subway platforms. The train never came to the same platform, so essentially, everyone would stay huddled between the two stairwells as other people rushed by and jostled you on the way to their other less complicated commuting situations. You had to crane your neck and listen through the ambient noise to guess which platform the train was pulling into and then race at break-neck speed to the correct stairwell. Anyone who has ever been on the NYC subway knows how hard it is to listen carefully to anything. If you guessed wrong you missed the train.  Basically everyone was huddled in silence like Anne Frank in the attick or slaves on the Underground Railroad until the train pulled in. Once it did, there was a frantic stampede up the stairs. I’m pretty sure there have been casualties at this station, but everyone is so frantic to get to where they’re going that no one notices if any of their comrades in “commuting battle” fall. You also have to race the closing doors of the train and that damnable vixen who announces them. Every time she says “Doors Closing,” I want to slaughter a white kitten.

On the day in question, I was dashing up the stairs and I was at the back of the pack. The woman in front of me should have had a walker, but she didn’t. No one was helping her up the stairs. I couldn’t even help her because we were sandwiched in so tightly. Time was ticking down and we finally made it up the stairs. People were filing into the train. Me and the walkerless broad SHOULD have been able to make it, but that would be too easy and there wouldn’t be a story, now would there?

She stopped at the door with arms outstretched, looking for the train number, letter, or maybe even a sign from God himself, but for whatever reason, she made no move to enter the vehicle.

“Doors Closing.” Ding dong.

The doors slid shut with her still gaping and scratching at her dry freckled scalp, which yes, I remember quite clearly.

“COME ON!” I screamed at her and threw up my hands. After I bellowed, she turned around and stared at me, her eyes wide and teary with obvious terror at my outburst. After the adrenaline died down, my heart sank and I felt pretty awful. I appologized demurely and walked all the way to the other end of the platform in shame to wait for the next train, praying it would come to the same platform so I wouldn’t have to repeat the whole bloody ritual again.

You can hate me if you want because I yelled at an elderly lady, but I tell you this because I think New York is full of these sorts of moments. Just today I was walking through Time’s Square with a friend of mine. The streets were packed with people here for the weekend of the 4th of July and some tax protest was also going on. I felt trapped and claustrophobic. As we were crossing a street, I felt like we were in that scene from Footloose where they play chicken on the tractors. No one was moving to allow anyone to pass so the two sides of the the street were converging on each other like batallions on opposite sides of the feild. It was as if the sides of the parted Red Sea were crashing down on Yul Brynner and his Egyptian chariots.

Time’s Square is often like this, but today something bizarre happened. My friend grabbed my backpack as he walked behind me. He wasn’t pushing me, but because we were both walking forward, I now lacked the ability to stop if I needed to for fear of tripping him up or creating a massive pedestrian traffic jam. It made me think of how we pass through time. There’s no fast forward or rewind, you just keep moving whether you like it or not. I had a miniature panic attack in my chest and I actually think I yelled out “Stop Pushing me!” even though he wasn’t. I’m told I caused a scene, but honestly, it was such a stressful mom.

Does these things happen to everyone or just me? It must happen to us all. I know I’m certifiable, but I don’t think I’m so far off base that my experiences aren’t relatable.

After a few evening errands, my friend and I ended up in Washington Square Park. I had wanted to check out the new fountain installation because I hadn’t seen it yet. As we entered the park, I was immediately hit by a lilting drum beat and the quivering vibrato of a jazz saxaphone solo. It was divine. We spotted a bench and sat down. The fountain was pumping at full force, pushing and pulsing high into the air. Whenever the breeze moved towards us it took a refreshing, non-invasive mist of water in our direction. We talked of Twitter, recent plays we had seen, and our fears that we might be going crazy, amongst other things. They sky was like a painting. Its not often I take a moment to actually look at the sky while I’m in the city. Sure, I look at the buildings and skyscrapers, but not the sky itself. The clouds were long, fluffy pillows and they were catching the firey orange light from the setting sun. Then, my friend giggled and pointed to a perfect bubble that was floating towards us in the air. At the same moment be both miraculously exclaimed, “It’s a Glinda Bubble!” Then we convulsed in laughter till our sides hurt. A man in the park had a bubble wand and was dragging it around the fountain as he danced to the many different musical strains springing like creative fonts from all the corners of the park. There was also a strange Asian boy dancing with a hula hoop who I must admit was pretty mesmerizing.

After our restful moment in the park, I decided to buy the first installment of Percy Jackson and the Olympians from the “teen fiction” section of the Shakespeare & Co. bookstore. It was kind of embarrassing to buy a book from the teen fiction shelf, but I did it anyways. I can’t be stopped when it comes to modern fictional interpretations of mythology.

So at the end of the night I sit here on my couch and despite the rough start to the day and some comedicly stressful reflections, July 1st had a rather pleasant end. All of these intense moments just seem to add up to the right equation. And that’s just life in the big city.