I’ve noticed that more and more cyclists are singing in the streets of Amsterdam, pedaling along and singing at the top of their lungs. This public reclamation of personal freedom, showing off just how relaxed you are, is a new thing. My ear is uneasy, unaccustomed, and un-accepting. My ear is a spiteful control freak.
I’m sitting in a café with a view of the lake, waiting for my coffee, when a young couple at the next table catches my eye. The young woman, long blond hair, casually puts her bare feet up on the table, right alongside her partner’s bowl of soup. The young man gently massages her toes with one hand and finishes his soup with the other. The young woman titters with delight and tries to tip the soup over with her toes. The sight of her bare feet on the table makes me slightly nauseous. My eye is a misanthrope. I don’t have an invisible remote to switch the scene from the opposite table off, which is what I secretly want, and so defeated, I get up and leave.
In many European cities the metro station elevators (used mostly by mothers with baby strollers, old folk, and cyclists carrying their bikes) are always plastered in piss and spit, used by men as urinals and spittoons. Taking the lift up to the platform, I cover my nose with my hand or scarf. The stench is unbearable. My nose is the guilty one. It’s a damned elitist.
I’ve noticed that as soon as they find a seat on the tram, an ever-increasing number of young women take out their makeup bags and do their make-up for the day. They’ve got everything there: eyeliner, mascara, nail files and nail polish. But why, of all places, do they have to do their make-up on the tram? If they really have to do it in public, why not in a public toilet or on a park bench?! Metro stations are obviously more convenient — I recently saw a middle-aged woman plucking her chin hair with a pair of tweezers while she was waiting for a train.
I’m standing on the street when a passing cyclist tosses a drink carton towards a non-existent rubbish bin, missing my head by about ten centimeters. Hey! — I yell, but there’s no chance of having it out with him as he quickly disappears from view.
There are several places of worship in my Amsterdam neighborhood. One of them is obviously a bit small, so when the weather’s nice the faithful head outside, unfurl their little prayer mats or whatever they have, and kneel down. When the faithful pray, no one, neither believers nor non-believers, can use the sidewalk. A signpost stands watch next to God’s temple; on it is a dog with a cross through it. A friend of mine has a dog. The self-appointed religious police have already warned him several times that dogs aren’t allowed to be walked past God’s temple. The space around the temple is, incidentally, filthy, because the children visiting the temple ditch their soft drink cans and snack wrappers there. But God obviously has his preferences: rubbish doesn’t bother him, but dogs do.
On both the trams and the metro, adolescents, kids, occupy most of the seats. Older folk meekly stand. The urban public space has become a field on which to exercise repressed sadomasochism. The stronger have their way, the weaker suck it up.
For months now, a thirty-something jerk has stood banging on his guitar in front of my supermarket. The guy is tone-deaf, and obviously can’t play, but he just stands there and doodles away, clearly hoping the racket will draw attention to his presence and that people will toss him a coin.
In apartment blocks some residents think it’s funny to throw food out the windows onto the street. To feed the birds. These birds, seagulls and pigeons mostly, hover overhead and crap on the windows below. What the birds don’t eat the rats finish up. At night rats freely roam the public space. This pushes animal rights activists’ like buttons.
In New York I climb into a taxi. The taxi driver, white knitted cap on his head, is saying his prayers. Holding a little prayer book in one hand, he repeats his mantra. From time to time he needs to brake or pay attention at a traffic light, so he interrupts his prayer. The monotonous mantra jars my agnostic ear, but I politely put up with the situation I’ve happened into. Not having anything smaller, I give the driver a large bill when I get out of the taxi.
“How much is the tip?”—he asks gruffly.
I notice how his tone of voice has suddenly changed: that meek spiritual bleating from a minute ago was for God, the threatening tone is for me. He’s already holding the bill in hand, so negotiation isn’t really an option; he could floor it and make off with the lot. Hoping for at least something back, I give him a generous tip.
In an Amsterdam metro station I take the steps down towards the exit, holding the side rail. A kid climbs towards me, stops in front of me for a second, and just glares. Hypnotized, I forget to move aside. The kid swears, hits me, shoves me aside, and continues on his way. Frozen with fear, I slowly make my way down, terrified that he could have ended up pushing me down the stairs. It was my mistake; I was on the left side, the wrong side.
The urban public space, which is governed by both written and unwritten rules of behavior, today serves as a stage for the exhibition of personal freedom. The old rules of etiquette no longer apply. “No Spitting” signs are long gone, seen as absurd and a bit of joke. As a result, nowadays, many simply spit wherever they like. Spit, piss, the body, the voice — it’s all about marking out one’s space. Nobody wants to go unnoticed. Everyone fights for his or her personal rights, but few respect the rights of others. Incidents of this demonstration of freedom are becoming increasingly common and increasingly violent.
I notice that I go outside less and less. I’ve put three locks on the front door, and I keep the curtains pulled. My apartment is slowly turning into a guerrilla nest. I notice that I don’t love my neighbor anymore either. Loving one’s neighbor requires a superhuman effort. It’s love without reciprocity, and I’m just a common, fallible human specimen. In any case, that’s God’s department, he created man in his own image, let him love him.
A blogger recently accused me of using exaggeration as a writing strategy. I allow that this is the case. It’s true that not everyone spits on the floor, puts their feet up on restaurants tables, walks the streets naked, or pushes people over for walking on the wrong side. My exaggeration is a form of concern for the future. It’s completely possible that in little more than a decade this document will seem like an unintelligible snapshot of the urban everyday. Future readers won’t know what phrases like urban public space mean, nor will it be clear to them what the writer meant to say. I admit, at this very moment I don’t know either. I’m not a prophet. Nor am I a saint, like Mike.
Mike is a well-respected sixty-something American university professor, who collects empty bottles and cans while walking each day from his home to the university. He stores them in his office for the day, and at day’s end takes the morning stockpile and supplements it with whatever he collects on the walk home, as much as he’s able to carry. He then sorts the empties into piles; glass, plastic, cans, stacking them neatly on his porch. At night, when everyone is asleep, human shadows converge on Mike’s Los Angeles home. Young Puerto Ricans. They spirit away Mike’s collection and recycle it for a little small change.
November 2008
FEAR OF PEOPLE
When Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange appeared in 1971 (based on Anthony Burgess’s eponymous novel) it was seen as a dystopian film, a black comedy, a futuristic satire. The adolescent protagonist Alex and his three friends (called droogs—from the Russian drug) amuse themselves with ultra-violence. Alex undergoes the Ludovico treatment, which induces in him a powerful aversion to violence, but then he himself becomes a victim of both his droogs and his former victims. Today Kubrick’s film is one of the key cultural references on juvenile violence. It seems, however, that today’s youth violence has far surpassed that imagined by either author or director.