This week I’m sharing reflections on fleeing the U.S. or running to France, whichever way you want to look at it. And for expert insight, I also spoke to author and journalist Lindsey Tramuta, who writes the most excellent New Paris Dispatch here on Substack.

Let’s say you’re me, and you leave the United States for Paris because you don’t feel very American anymore. Or perhaps the problem is that the United States doesn’t feel so much like America anymore. Either way, Paris has been calling you back for decades, so after one particularly important birthday, you pack two bags and one dog and head to the airport.

Alas, immediately after arriving, you remember that the quickest way to feel American is to go to Europe. Leave the U.S., and your most distinguishing feature will probably be your Americanness (unless you’re one of those seamlessly bicultural people, and you know who you are).

This is not necessarily terrible, but, oh, the irony.

Even if I perfect my plus-que-parfait, and I never misgender a trashcan again, I’m stuck with the accent. It’s not fatal, but it’s permanent. I’ll spend the rest of my days announcing my not-Frenchness whenever I speak. To be fair, sometimes my shoes give me away before I even say a word. Also: if I wear a certain aggressively floral dress, waiters seem compelled to snatch the French menu out of my hands and give me the English one, just on principle.

Subscribe now

Here I’m “that American writer,” or someone’s American friend, or “the américaine who always asks for salted butter with her breakfast.” At some point, if I’m lucky, I’ll graduate to that “old writer.”

After 30 years in the U.S., my Dad was still “that tall German guy,” though it was said with affection. More immigrant irony: when Dad visited his hometown, Berlin, his German had a slight American accent, and he didn’t get German slang or jokes anymore. He was forever betwixt and between cultures. Always both and neither.

This is what you sign up for when you change worlds.

In trying to explain this betwixt and betweenness to folks who ask me what it’s like to move to Paris on your own, I’m reminded of my favorite movie about Americans in Paris. It’s a surprisingly radical little film from 1961 called “Paris Blues,” and it’s about two American jazz musicians who’ve abandoned the U.S. for France, as many writers and artists did then. It’s not perfect, but it stars Sidney Poitier and Paul Newman, who are never a waste of time. Plus, there’s a glorious cameo by Louis Armstrong, and music by Duke Ellington.

Poitier is Eddie Cook, a thoughtful saxophonist who finds freedom in the beauty of Paris, far from segregation and racism in the United States. Newman is Ram Bowen, a moody trombone player drawn to the creative freedom of Paris’ legendary jazz scene. They fall in love with two American tourists played by Joanne Woodward (as Lilian) and Diahann Carroll (as Connie), and must choose between Paris and the U.S.

Eddie and Connie walk Paris talking about the civil rights movement in the U.S. Eddie waves his hand toward the Seine and tells Connie to stay for a while, see what it’s like to sit down for lunch somewhere without worrying about being clubbed for it: “You’ll wake up one day, look across the ocean and say, who needs it?” Connie argues that everyone needs their roots and pushes him to come home, be part of a changing nation. “Eddie, this is not your home. This is a place you’ve run to.” For Ram, it’s a simpler decision: an American life with Lilian or the artist’s life he’s built around music in Paris.

MY CRAZY EX-COUNTRY

This is the eternal push and pull of emigration. The film’s opening scene captures the undeniable allure of bohemian Paris in the 1950s and early 1960s – gritty, rumpled, avant-garde, and integrated. Director Martin Ritt shows us a packed jazz club, the band plays, people dance, smoke furiously, make out in the aisles as waiters weave around them. And in a censor-busting move for 1961, we see interracial and same-sex couples in the crowd. Later, there’s a sizzling encounter between Newman and the sultry French actress, Barbara Laage, who plays the owner of the club. All they do is talk about how she’s preparing a chicken for dinner, and yet…

(Watch “Paris Blues” on YouTube.)

That’s the Paris we fall for – food, seduction, music, perfect eyeliner, and an unabashed indulgence in what is pleasurable and beautiful. The thing is, the myth, like all myths, is partly true. So it’s not surprising that kind of liberation appeals to so many of our tightly-wound American souls, marinated as we are in our founders’ Puritanical mores.

Lately, my conversations with restless or anxious American friends have gone from pied-a-terre-fantasy musings to real discussions about them leaving the U.S. I tell them what I know from living here now, and in my 20s, and share the name of my immigration lawyer, who says he’s been inundated with French visa queries, particularly from gay Americans who feel increasingly unwelcome at home.

I’m never sure what to say when people ask how difficult it is to integrate here in Paris. I don’t have a shred of regret about selling everything and coming here. I am at home here in ways I’ll save for another newsletter. But it was terrifying at first because there was no turning back. I knew I couldn’t afford to come back and restart life in New York once I left. (New York coop apartments are like the Mafia; once you’re out, you’re out.) But I’m not typical. Maybe no one is.

So, to get some informed insights and wisdom for those of you considering a move abroad, or are even considering considering it, I checked in with someone who has done some deep reporting on Americans in France.

Paris-based journalist and author Lindsey Tramuta writes The New Paris Dispatch newsletter, which is my go-to publication for Paris news and culture. Late last year, Lindsey began a fascinating series called “On Leaving America,” in which she interviews Americans who’ve settled in France. They discuss the highs and lows of living here, what they’ve discovered about themselves, and their best guidance on what to think about as you make your decision. Lindsey launched the series, presciently enough, just days after last fall’s presidential election. However, she’s long been intrigued by the reasons millions of Americans leave their home country.

Here are some of Lindsey’s thoughts on what attracted many of the Americans in her series to France, what she’s learned after 19 years in Paris, and her advice for anyone thinking about a move like this.

(You can listen to our entire conversation at the link below.)

Was there any common thread in what your interviewees were looking for?

Lindsey Tramuta: “What does come up is a sort of freedom. Now, that can mean different things for different people, but whether it's the freedom to reinvent yourself, the freedom to explore things with more encouragement, because this is not a society that says you need to be working 75-hours a week, and you need to be focused on making the most money possible. It could be freedom of movement and just the freedom to share ideas. I think there's really a diversity of thought that is quite powerful here.

Are we at risk of the same censorship and suppression [in France]? Potentially. You know, we have a billionaire, right-wing billionaire, Vincent Bolloré, who owns media companies that are going to try to dictate [news] in the way that Fox News has and other platforms have. But there is also something that the French have that the Americans don't, and that's this absolute rage that will take them to the streets at the drop of a hat.”

And on the difficulties of making this kind of a move?

“All of them acknowledge the complexity of the decision. The bureaucratic complexity as well. And it really is not for the faint of heart. I mean, the number of times people almost throw in the towel signals to you that you can't just make this decision on a whim. And there are people who do and who are like, ‘Oh, it didn't work out.’ Well, maybe it didn't work out because you didn't fully research how complicated it was going to be or how process-oriented it was going to be. And I would say, don't think that it's somehow easier for people who are going to the US. It's not. Or the UK.”

You ask your interviewees what lessons they’ve learned from living in France. How would you answer that question?

“Well, there are two things. One would be that taking yourself out of your familiar context is so huge, and having a different perspective on the world. Not only are you likely to hear other opinions, viewpoints, and histories related to a certain topic, [but] if you're in France, you're going to hear the French perspective on a relationship with other parts of Europe [rather] than the American perspective. And I think that has completely shaped me as an adult. It also helped me unlearn a lot of things – [such as] the idea that America is the shining beacon on a hill. Some people [un]learn that while being in the U.S. The reason I [un]learned it later was probably due to when I left. I left as a 20-year-old. If I had stayed and been part of America during all of the periods of social upheaval [that have happened] since I left, maybe that would be different. Maybe it would have happened sooner.

But the unlearning is so important because I think it really highlights the extent to which we can be brainwashed. Same thing happens in other cultures, of course. The version of history you're told about your country in school. And so that was both painful and welcome because I think it makes you a more critical thinker. It's made me a more critical thinker.

And what have I learned about living here in particular? It's the role that integrating via language changes everything. There are people who have lived here 30, 40 years and who can barely speak French. And if that somehow works for them and their ability to navigate life here, I'm amazed. But wow, I couldn't do that. I feel like it’s a moral obligation. I also find it so intellectually stimulating and emotionally broadening.

You tap into a part of yourself you didn't know existed because you can express yourself in another way with different words. And so I felt like it has just opened me up in ways I couldn't have imagined. When you're studying a language, you don't know that that's what's going to happen if you keep with it. And so I found it quite powerful.”

What advice do you have for those considering a move to France?

“I would say, remember that the beginning is always difficult. And so for those who have gotten the visa or are making the move, if you give up in a year, it's premature. There's like a sweet spot. Everyone goes through this year and a half, potentially, of severe discomfort, whether it's making friends, feeling like you're respected or heard, especially if the language is still complicated. That's gotten maybe a little bit easier because so many people speak English here now. But I would say give it time. And so you have to have kind of a thick skin.”

Leave a comment

Check out all the wise advice on moving to France from Lindsey’s interviewees in the “On Leaving America” series here. AUDIO: You can listen to more of our conversation below. We discuss how political and social discord affect migration from the U.S. and cultural differences between France and the United States.

Related:

For more on the unique place France holds in the American imagination, check out this piece on Mastermind.

My Crazy Ex-Country

The Paris Review on “Paris Blues”

“Paris Blues,” the entire film free on YouTube.

“Paris Blues,” by Harold Flender The book on which the film was based—a much grittier look at bohemian Paris in the 50s, focused more on the Eddie Cook character.

When Making Art Means Leaving the United States: A new book expands the history of the Black Americans who nurtured their creativity overseas.

P.S. And just for illustrative purposes, here is the dog I took along with the suitcases.

Join me and Glynnis MacNicol, author of “I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself”, for The Blue Hour, a life-changing(seriously) writing retreat this September. The cossetted dog may make a guest appearance.

I didn’t think the United States still had a hold on my heart or even my anger. I walked away, after all. But last month, after living in Paris for a year, I visited Brooklyn, where I raised my kids and found my most beloved friends. At the time, I joked that I was returning to answer the question: Is visiting the U.S. after leaving it like having lunch with an ex who’s joined a cult?

I wrote a sweet little piece about what it was like to drop in on my old life. But it hasn’t felt right to publish it these last weeks because of the roiling avalanche of disturbing news from the United States. It felt odd to talk blithely about spending time there without acknowledging the fear and uncertainty I now hear in the voices of people I love who are there.

The trouble is, even if you move to France, you can’t avoid thinking about America’s troubles. I just saw the Bob Dylan biopic, a film set in the 1960s, a decade of progress that almost broke the U.S., and I found myself sobbing after ten minutes. It was unexpected grief for a country I’d left without hesitation. I broke down when they sang the old folk song “This Land Is Your Land.” If you went to U.S. schools, you’ll know it:

“This land is your land, this land is my land

From California to the New York island

From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters

This land was made for you and me”

And later, there’s this gorgeous bit of writing:

“I've roamed and rambled, and I followed my footsteps

To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts

And all around me, a voice was sounding

This land was made for you and me.”

Subscribe now

The original version of the song was written by Woody Guthrie in 1940 as a retort to “God Bless America,” which he saw as cloyingly patriotic, especially during the Great Depression when millions of Americans were standing in line for food and jobs. Still, Guthrie removed a few pointed verses about inequality before releasing it, including this one:

“In the squares of the city, in the shadow of the steeple, By the relief office I seen my people; As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking Is this land made for you and me?”

That last line is, of course, an eternal and inescapable question for the U.S. It is a song about a nation gifted with endless natural bounty and promise yet hobbled by its inequities. That tension between potential and reality is why loving the U.S. can be so heartbreaking.

Take it from Bruce Springsteen, who gets at all that in this rendition of the song, which he calls the most beautiful ever written about America.

Subscribe now

The thing is, I was never all that patriotic to begin with – always howling about some cruel and idiotic American war abroad or injustice at home, never mind the Hunger Games healthcare system. But the Dylan film reminded me of the underlying story you hear in all American music. Rock, folk, blues, bluegrass, rap, country – all are cousins, all are woven from the yearnings and heartbreak of dozens of cultures from all over the planet, but mixed in the U.S., and you can’t go anywhere on the planet without hearing it. This is America’s superpower. We make songs that can puncture iron curtains and melt cultural boundaries. And it is why hundreds of Parisians were in a theater to see a film about Bobby Zimmerman from Minnesota, whom they know as Dylaaan.

So here I am in the old world, weeping for the new one and the loss of something essential that we can’t yet name or quantify. But it surely has something to do with the ache in those 60s songs, the relentless forward motion, the hopeful dissent.

As to that original question I was writing about last month. Is visiting the U.S. after leaving like having lunch with your ex who’s joined a cult? Yeah, it kinda is. And even so, at the prospect of seeing your ex again, there’s nervousness. You wonder, will there be regret or longing? A ‘maybe I should not have run away to another continent?’ feeling.

You watch your ex do their familiar ex things, but now you see them through the dispassionate looking glass of a new life. On this visit, Brooklyn seemed more vast, and it is, compared to Paris. With 2.9 million people, that one borough of New York City is bigger than my new city.

And if you know Brooklyn, you know that moving through it is like an all-five-senses immersive video game in which anything can come at you any time. A sofa left in a crosswalk, a man with a pet rat in his pocket on the subway, a spectacular garden overflowing its fences on a desolate block. The brownstones with their lanterns and flower boxes. It’s the lovely. The scary. The fascinating. All of it every day, everywhere. I remember how that energy lit me up when I first lived there as a young mom. Now, not so much.

On this visit, I walked along the looping paths I’d trod for years between home, work, subway, park, coffee shop, kids’ schools. There was fondness, but not regret over leaving. I knew that my heart would not constrict with grief when I left. Nor was I enraged that the wait for subway trains appears to have doubled. Instead, it was a kind of liberation. Brooklyn’s problems are no longer my problems, nor are its charms a reflection of me.

The uncoupling of my identity from Brooklyn feels surprisingly bloodless, considering how much of any New Yorker’s identity is tied to their neighborhood. Changing zip codes in New York is almost as dramatic as changing countries. If I tell anyone from Gotham that I was a Park Slope, Brooklyn mom, they’ll know where I bought my bagels and recognize me for the crunchy lefty tribe that used to be mine.

Now, like the old song says, Park Slope is just someone I used to know. Brooklyn and I could even make the small talk of longtime exes. Is that yet another soulless white marble cafe on your corner? Ugh. I get it. Those things are popping up all over my town, too. We could shake our heads in agreement that worn, soft-chaired coffee shops are better. And we’d part without drama or anger. But as I head to the airport, I find, to my surprise, that my heart is overrun by tenderness and worry for a city and country that are no longer mine.

Share

Leave a comment

And for something a little lighter, here’s this:

Well hello! This week: a story of acceptance and immigration.

In my family, we are either becoming immigrants or marrying them. I come from two lines of northern Europeans prone to moving three or six thousand miles East or West, and not just once in a lifetime. We go from Russia to California and points in between. We leave for love, or because of war, or, like me, to become new again.

I don’t know if this means my people enjoy not fitting in or that they are good at fitting in anywhere. Maybe both. But here I am in Paris, an immigrant again with that dueling sense of precariousness and gratitude that comes with not being a citizen.

This kind of transplantation involves paperwork. But at least the bureaucratic language in France sounds fancy and dramatic. It entertains me to no end. For example, I got a “convocation” with a date for my official French medical exam to validate my visa. A convocation! How thrilling. Sounds like a graduation ceremony for when you reach a new level of immigration.

Not until I was in on the Metro to get my exam did it occur to me that I could perhaps fail this test and be sent back to the U.S. And who knows what would be disqualifying? What if I’m riddled with the bad type of cholesterol, or they discover I have a disease I’ve never heard of?

When my Irish and Swedish great-grandparents arrived at New York’s Ellis Island, American health inspectors would lift immigrant eyelids with a button hook to see if they were sick. Anyone who appeared to have a “Class A loathsome or dangerous” disease or seemed mentally unstable had their coats marked with a chalk symbol, like S for senile. They were then pulled from the line and sent to wait in pens for further examination. Those sturdy housemaids and carpenters who had come so ridiculously far by ship must have been terrified of being turned away.

And now, 100 years later, I’m one of a whole bunch of Americans wanting to go back in Europe, hoping we’ll be accepted. Oh, the ping-ponging irony of it all.

Subscribe now

When I checked in for my convocation at a big building just south of Paris, they handed me a six-page psychological questionnaire and directed me to a central waiting area. It was a large room surrounded by a series of doors on three sides. So very many doors, some with pictograms — one looked like a scale, and another had a radioactive warning. I watched people go into one door and come out another, with doctors popping out like gophers to direct us. It reminds me of the British play Noises Off in which actors slam doors in and out of scenes with perfect comedic choreography. I suspect that the entire French public health system is based on a startlingly efficient set of doors that move patients through a series of interlocking changing rooms that open into exam rooms or back into the waiting room.

I leaped up when one of the doctors seemed to say something like SCHROBSDORFF while pointing to a door to his right, then disappeared behind his door. So, like Alice in Universal Healthcare Wonderland, I entered what turned out to be a room smaller than a toilet stall. There were two hooks, a bench, and a second door that didn’t have a handle on my side. There was no gown to change into, which would be unheard of in the U.S., nor were there written instructions. What to do? Get fully undressed? Wait for further instructions via a hidden speaker?

It’s entirely possible this was a cognitive test.

But wait, on the wall in the corner there were two much-Xeroxed images of a 90s-looking couple topless. So, in the spirit of doing as the French do, I decided to make like the lady in the picture. I took off my top and sat on the bench, arms crossed. I was very demure, very mindful, and very worried that one door or another would open, revealing me to a waiting room full of people. Finally, an unseen someone on the other side of the handleless door cracked it just a few inches. A signal! I could see an X-ray machine on the other side, so I stood up and walked right out there gownless, chin up, tits up (sort of), and left American modesty behind.

Share

And so it went. They moved me through door after door, did every conceivable test, weighed me and recorded my height in one room, and tested me for diabetes and HIV with a finger prick in another room. Just a “petit pain,” said that doctor. It was like being the car in a car wash. Yet I was reliably befuddled throughout, forgetting how to get on a scale or unable to find the exit of a space I’d just walked into. The Ellis Island inspectors would have marked me with an S. But in my defense, something about losing cultural context turns you into an idiot.

Most of the people with me in the waiting room were from China. I know this because I heard the French doctors greet them with a hello in Chinese. (My, how things have changed!) But there was one other American. I heard her chirp BONjour with a booming American accent. Her hair was satiny, blow-dried highlighted blonde, and she wore a black dress dress shirt, collar up.

That BONjour! She’s so American. So unlike me, I thought. Not two minutes later, a doctor confuses us, calling her Schrobsdorff. As she enters the X-ray door, I realize I own the same black and white Hoka sneakers she’s wearing. Generic American lady of a certain age who loves Paris, c’est moi. I’ll always be that here. It’s the bargain you strike when you leave home. According to the expat gods, you will be humbled and seen through the filter of national cliches.

Just before I got to the last door, the one with the pictogram of a doctor consultation, I started to look at the psych questions. Some were a paragraph long in French and exceedingly personal. They included this:

“Have you had a period during which you spent a lot of time being afraid of gaining weight or becoming fat or trying to control your food intake?” OUI ou NON?

First of all, bahahahahahah! But more importantly, which answer would make France accept me? Because I am, after all, just a girl standing in front of a new country asking it to love me. Maybe I circle NON because, in truth, there was no single period of time when I feared gaining weight. It’s been pretty much every day since puberty. But maybe I should answer OUI because a healthy fear of weight gain might be a plus if you’re coming from America.

Subscribe now

There were at least four questions about alcohol and drug consumption, including whether I’d ever consumed it to calm anxiety. Or at least, I think that’s what they were asking. I was too proud to ask for the English version, which is also the reason I keep accidentally ordering kidneys in restaurants.

The last doctor had my chest X-ray on the screen when I walked in, which was unnerving. I thought we were about to have a difficult conversation. But it was fine. She was offering to take a picture of it with my camera so I would have a record of my healthy lungs. Something nice to post on a dating site for seniors.

She and I spoke in French till we both realized that it's a second language for both of us, and we laughed. Above her mask, I see her eyes are that cornflower blue I associate with the Ukrainians I met in Odesa on a reporting trip back when they first declared independence from the former Soviet Union—another bit of rhyming history. And indeed, she’s from Ukraine, where she was a pediatrician. We talk about how gorgeous Ukraine is, how much she misses her old practice, her country, and her peace of mind.

She's a reluctant immigrant whose country seems to be getting further out of reach every day. She can’t go home, and I don’t want to go home. I have the privilege of choice, she doesn’t. Yet, there we are, united in our not-Frenchness, cracking up over the specificity of those psych questions. I joked with her about one that I read as: “Have you heard voices in your head that are not your own.” I told her I feel lucky when I do. The doctor nodded like I was making sense. Lately, I hear the voice of my fearsome grandmother, Anja, who fled pogroms in St. Petersburg. She lived in Montparnasse in the 1920s with other Russian Jewish expat artists and writers and went on to three other countries after that.

An hour and a half after my convocation began (what efficiency!), they handed me a gorgeously official, stamped letter stating that the French government had approved me and my health. I’m thinking of framing it like a diploma. To get the Metro home, I had to pass a massive Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet. Proof that you can run, but you can’t hide from America.

Leave a comment

Share

RELATED:

Subscribe now

Every July, verdant foliage born into the cool drizzle of an English Spring gets walloped by bouts of heat and sun. But this summer has been particularly intense for Britain. Record-breakingly hot days staggered by without a cloud, Royal air force planes were grounded when tarmacs started to melt, and a blustery blond Prime Minister resigned suddenly after being ejected by his own party for repeated mendacity. (Imagine that!) 

Meanwhile, visitors like me flooded London at pre-COVID levels, moving through the streets in sweaty groups, unsure of what to do with ourselves as temperatures climbed toward and later passed 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Everything seemed hazy and untethered. 

Of course, I could be projecting. Walking through a parched Hyde Park, I saw six or seven people standing perfectly still in a half circle around a huge tree. They had one arm outstretched, palm up, eyes skyward. I thought it was a religious thing, like a pray-in – maybe in hopes of relief from the weather or forgiveness from mother nature for our transgressions. But when I got closer, I could see they were holding little pieces of fruit – offerings to attract luminously green parakeets hidden in the tree. Context is everything. 

The birds would alight delicately, resting for a second on the fingers of their acolytes, snatch their prize, then disappear again among the green leaves. You might ask: Why does London have wild parakeets? As legend has it, while Jimi Hendrix was living in London during the swinging 60s, he released a breeding pair of ring-necked tropically green parakeets named Adam and Eve into the city. Other explanations allege that these birds, native to Africa, are descendants of escapees from Henry the VIII's menagerie. But they are likely just former pets that flocked together for protection and have been breeding ever more successfully over the decades.

And now, like Starbucks, parakeets are all over the city.  

At one point, in a little restaurant inside Hyde Park, I saw that the bar had Aperol Spritz on tap right next to the British beers, like an orange interloper. Did I mention it was a prosecco drink ON TAP? This minor affront to English bartenders was disorienting and funny at the same time. 

Apparently, Italian cocktails and embarrassing politicians are everywhere now. And yet, it's still tempting to assume that our favorite people and countries aren't going to change when we've been away for a bit. But great nations wobble, borders move, and the startling developments of a few years prior are soon unremarkable. At Paddington Station, the new post-Brexit passport checks for passengers boarding Eurostar trains to France are already routine to Brits who lined up with their international travel documents ready. And soon enough, 104-degree summers will be as ordinary in England as wild parakeets.

I came to this side of the Atlantic for my lovely Goddaughter's graduation from a university a few hours south of London. In an ambitious post-pandemic catch-up, the school recognized three years of Arts and Humanities graduates in a single ceremony replete with the extravagant robes and floppy hats of British academia. We were treated to a deeply satisfying parade of flowing gold, blue and crimson satin with velvety, sparkle-encrusted sleeves. A joyful interlude between disturbances, both political and environmental. 

The graduation hall had air conditioning, not a minor miracle in England. Better yet, the speeches were short and cheerful. And then, after an uncountable number of names were read and all those young lives were launched into this hot and unpredictable world, the chancellor dismissed us. As we stood to leave, the band began to play the theme song to "Monty Python's Flying Circus," the iconic British comedy show whose goofy animated intro ends with a giant foot squishing a chicken man to the sound of a whoopie cushion. I assumed the school was having a bit of fun after a difficult few years, and what a fantastic touch. 

But nope, this wasn't a wink-wink, nudge-nudge rendition. What I knew only as an ironic takedown of pomposity started as a celebrated march by the American composer John Philip Sousa. And better yet, it's played not only at British graduations, but by the U.S. Marine Band at almost every presidential inauguration. (Sans silly walks or whoopie cushion sounds, of course. For now, anyway. I'm not sure anyone wants to place bets on the constancy of American political traditions these days.)  

And that wasn't the only time I was ambushed by musical irony in England. Earlier in the week, I visited St. Albans cathedral, one of Britain's oldest churches. It was built with brick from the ruins of a nearby Roman village around the time of the Norman invasion. The air inside was gloriously cool, and you could see how the Roman arches gave way to the spiky Gothic bits as one era replaced another layer by layer in fits and starts. Evidence that even when you can identify the start of a massive transformation in hindsight, in real-time, these shifts aren't instant; they happen stone by stone, person by person, town by town. 

Leave a comment

A kindly docent greeted me and gently suggested I not clatter loudly into the nave during services. He explained that St. Alban was Britain’s first Christian martyr, a third-century youth and early convert to Christianity who was beheaded for his faith. I also learned that the English churchmen and barons who drafted the Magna Carta met at St. Albans in 1213 to hash out their early ideas about habeas corpus and how all people and institutions should be accountable to the law. 

Two thousand years of history in one spot was more than my tiny American brain can handle. So I thanked the docent and sat down in a side chapel where I could hear the sermon and look at the ceiling, which had a pattern of golden sheep-like animals and large-clawed birds amid a field of black and red roses. The flowers commemorate Britain's Wars of the Roses, otherwise known as the Civil Wars, a series of 15th-century battles for the crown that lasted for 30 years.

I'd forgotten that this famous war was not one fight, but multiple civil conflicts over decades. It reminded me of a recent survey in which half the Americans polled said they thought there would be a U.S. Civil War "in the next few years." Aptly, the minister's sermon on that hot Sunday was about neighborliness that defies national borders and religious boundaries. And to close out, a children's choir began to sing something that was confoundingly familiar. 

Even accompanied by an organ, the lyrics were suspiciously corny, and I soon recognized the song. It repeats endlessly at every Disney theme park as visitors wend their way via boat through a strange landscape of animatronic dolls in national costumes. And yet, that dumb tune moved me. Maybe because after years apart, thanks to quarantines and wars and climate-change catastrophes, it’s more evident than ever how entwined we still are.

And that is how I found myself weeping with the tombs of martyrs under my feet as little British kids sang "It's a Small World (After All)."  

Share

MORE TRAVEL: Driving to Odesa On a Very Warm September Day

U.K. GALLERY

It’s Not Just You is a free weekly essay, uplifting recommendations, and a community of thousands. If you love it, sign up for a free subscription or consider supporting my work with a paid subscription at a discounted rate here:

Subscribe now

If you’re already a paid subscriber, your monthly payments should have been paused for the last few weeks while I’ve been on the road. If not, just let me know by replying to this email and I’ll extend the rebate. And, thank you.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

It's Not Just You

Desire, Shame and a Movie That Might Change the Way You Look In the Mirror

I cannot stop thinking about one scene in a movie I saw last week. In it, a 62-year-old woman lets a hotel bathrobe fall to the floor and stands nude in front of a full-length mirror. Her body is not a testament to discipline, surgery, or unusual genetic gifts. It is fully human, softened by time and…

Read more

4 years ago · 15 likes · 8 comments · Susanna Schrobsdorff

Share