On Missing Out
Tuesday, October 19, 2010 at 01:38PM All I can wish for you is that you get what you wish for yourself.
-ČižiksYou can't always get what you want.
-Miks Džegers
This is the point at which we have arrived: we're finally in a place, technologically, where it's possible to feel equally close to and far away from the people you love in far-off places.
Which is worse: knowing or not knowing? Knowing that you missed out. Seeing pictures of a gathering you couldn't make. A reunion. A show. Hearing everyone tell you how great it was. YOU MISSED IT. You should have been there. It was AMAZING. Is it better to be cut off? Left unawares?
A few days ago, I happened to notice on Twitter that my friend Gustavs, one of the biggest recording artists in Latvia, was playing a show for his new album—Trešā elpa (Third Wind)—at a venue in Riga called "Arena." I wrote to my best and oldest Latvian friend, Čižiks—video director, Latvia's official whistler, and Gustavs' partner in rhyme—on Facebook:
"I really, really want to go to this gig. My transporter is on the fritz; can you help? I don't have tickets; am I on the guest list?"
"You're on the guest chart!"
"Shame about the transporter then."
I was sad. I should have been there: I had intended to spend the month of October in Latvia. Things happened, as they do, plans changed, paychecks beckoned, and instead of eating saldskabjumaize and biezpiens and drinking balzams by the sea, I've spent October hard at work, tucked into books, devising projects and getting myself involved in Other Important Things.
So what's the big deal? I'd been to two of Gustavs' shows before. The first was an outdoor show outside the Dole supermarket in the Riga neighborhood of Ķengarags; I stood with his grandmother and watched how afterwards he was swarmed by autograph hunting pre-teens carrying skateboards, all bangs and wide eyes. The second was in a tiny factory town on the Estonia-Latvia border, where young girls stood awkwardly in the front row staring up at the rock star on stage. I'd ridden out to the bordertown with Gustavs' DJ, Monsta, in a responsibly-driven station wagon, making polite conversation as we tried to keep up with the racing BMW in front of us, the silhouettes of girls in short skirts laughing in the back window along the dark fir tree-lined highways. So I'd been there. I'd proudly watched on as he stirred the crowd to throw their hands in the air. What was it to miss another show? And then, online, I saw a video that showed the size of the place.
He wasn't just playing at a venue called "Arena."
He was playing an arena.
(Photo: Kristīne Šumska)
I really should have been there.
* * *
I was an obsessive journal keeper when I lived in Latvia in the mid-90s. The first mention of Gustavs in my journal is on September 1st, 1994, the day a fight broke out in Filharmonijas Square and the police had to come break it up. Gustavs—or "Ļoļiks" as I knew him then—was a new friend, a skinny kid with a shaved head and a baseball jacket, the grandson of a poet, who would end up becoming a poet of sorts himself. He sat with me and calmed my fears as some drunks slashed each other with broken vodka bottles. They shouted things at each other that I didn't yet understand. He was an angel, calmly explaining what was happening, telling me that not all of Latvia is like this.
He was only sixteen, but he was already looking for ways to view the world as a better place. As an adult he still does this, with songs like "Mūsu Soļi (Our Footsteps)." The song, released after the recent economic collapse in Latvia, encourages Latvians to lift themselves up as positive role models for others who have succumbed to stagnation. Even if you can't understand the words, I feel like the video—directed, incidentally, by Čižiks, who makes an appearance at 1:54—conveys such a positive message... it makes sense that these were the people I gravitated towards. People who view the world as the good place it can be, people who see angels in everyday people:
Fifteen years ago, I wouldn't even have known what half my friends were up to, the good messages they were preaching, apart from the occasional note received via airmail, two or three dim pictures thrown in the envelope. Even with visits once every two years to refresh my memory of the what it feels like to be there (and oh! what it feels like to be there), I wouldn't have known about the arena show, how marvelous it was, how uplifting and inspiring. I certainly wouldn't have known what other people thought.
But now? Facebook, Twitter, and Latvian versions of the same have me experiencing the minutae of a Latvian day through the eyes of my friends. With Gustavs and Čižiks, the knowledge is multiplied, thanks to music videos on YouTube, entire performances, rehearsals, radio interviews, photo galleries, articles written about Gustavs' crowdsurfing, blog posts, tweets, even—my god!—foursquare checkins from fans about to see the show.
It leaves me with this odd sense of knowing everything, participating by proxy, but hyper-aware of the fact that I'm not there. I can't taste the same bread they're tasting. I can't smell the sea. And yet it's as if I'm just around the corner. Is it possible that for the first time in my life I'm just as near as I am far? Is it possible that we're going to become closer and farther from each other at the same time, until physical distance isn't even a thing at all, yet there's still just as much heartache, if not more?
* * *
Sunday was a warm day. I walked up to the park to read on a bench, and found myself chatting with Čižiks over Skype.
"I want to come visit you guys!" he said. Just a day and a half after the show, he couldn't possibly know how much I wanted to visit them.
"Then come!" said I.
As I sat in the shadow of Grant's Tomb watching pigeons fight for airspace, I imagined Čižiks in his far-off seaside home with its tall firs and birch trees out back, the quiet flap of cranes overhead in the cold night air. I looked down at his words on the little screen in my hands. I felt calm, happy. And then I realized: sometimes, when you're missing out, it's enough to hear a voice from far away telling you that you're still being missed too.
(More of my ramblings about Latvia can be found here.)
© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.
latvia, technology
Reader Comments (6)
zan i love that your writing is like little flicks at stalled out emotions... and suddenly they've sputtered back to life. i always feel so drawn in when i read, with little clicks and whirring sounds in my mind the whole time. well done.
My fiancee is from Sweden and at times I just want to break the computer becuase looking at picutres on facebook will make him so homesick but I know that it is good for him to feel that way.
Sam - you, as always, are too kind. I'm glad I help the clicking and the whirring.
Bohemianbailie - just be sure to keep plenty of fresh dill in the kitchen!
Actually just last night I made a stroganoff with tons of dill!!
yes dill! deservedly all the rage...yo zan, the post and gustavs' vid made me well up, granted i'm an easy target, stil was all verklempt in admiration over how damn grounded you've managed to be all your life, and how all that present moment awareness has fostered a connectedness in yr world; truly learning the language of a foreign land, nurturing the potentially flip connections with strangers till they stick, and grow. and sure, i'm reading shantaram right now. and sure, last night i watched that banksy movie (a hilariously grim lil film essentially about a simple-minded ego-mad "artist" ((one 'mister brain wash')), the vapid crap he produced, and the multitude of suckers who bought in); perhaps more disheartening were the pple in the audience who seemed to have watched a different movie entirely, saying "well i tip my hat to him!" and ambling off to drown their confused brains in beer so's to quiet that unnerving inner tulmut, the weak moral raging btw a new-age panic to keep everything postive and an apparent desire to become you-tube warriors and win the rat race. meaning, it was nice to see all that standing still and looking at me honestly going on in the video. no clue what's being said, but it's damn-well being meant...i'm going to dance to dubstep tonight cuz i wont stop fuckin luvin it
lil sis, you are SO being missed too. You GO luv it. (Additional response can be found in the email sorely owed to you...)