Remembering 2002: A Very Peter Gabriel Teenhood

Did you hear? Peter Gabriel is touring North America to mark the 25^th anniversary of his great album So. Naturally I am stoked to see my favorite singer in concert for a fourth time, because I am hip and trendy and down with the kids; but I am double-stoked because 2012 is actually a personal anniversary in my relationship with So.

People who had the misfortune to know me when I was in my teens could tell you that my defining characteristic as an adolescent was my deep, borderline-obsessive love for Peter Gabriel. (Like I said: hip, trendy, etc.) The wall above my bed was completely obscured by posters, newspaper clippings, and magazine articles relating to PG, as I abbreviated him; I faithfully wore my PG T-shirt and baseball cap every weekend; I traded bootlegs online (yes, children, once upon a time we used to trade bootlegs, via snail mail); I was consistently in the top five posters on a certain PG fan forum.

At its best, being a teenager is very dull – a stretch of life you just have to wait out so you can get to the good parts. You have to latch onto something to get you through it: casual sex, illegal drugs, chess club. I was really, really into Peter Gabriel.

One of the reasons is simple timing. After a decade of soundtrack albums and thumb-twiddling, PG dropped Up, his first proper record since 1992's Us, on September 24, 2002 – which happened to be about six weeks after my family relocated from Kenya to Scotland.

I had, of course, known that summer 2002 would be our last summer in Kenya. I was careful to commit it to memory: all the safaris, bumping along dusty roads on the roof-rack of the car, dutifully penciling down every critter we saw; blissed-out days spent reading voraciously beside the pool of a coastal villa; swearing eternal loyalty to the friends I still wasn't really used to having. Plus, Peter Gabriel. That school year I had been very into the Who, Pink Floyd, Rush, and Gong, so maybe it was toward the summer that PG fever struck me. I can remember sitting in my parents' car, listening to “Big Time” on headphones, and thinking: I am IN LOVE with this album.

Acclimatizing to life in the UK from Kenya is really, really hard, even if you're not 13. Peter Gabriel's music helped me get through a rotten time in my life. My prog-rock childhood had convinced me that good music was over; but the release of a new record from my favorite musician was like a little island of sanity in the midst of that chaotic combination of culture shock and adolescence. So was something from Kenya. Up was something from Britain. Peter Gabriel offered a way of exploring new territory while still being in touch with my past.

I love So. I've listened to it probably eighty billion gazillion times in the past decade, but to my ears it still hums with the echoes of a very different part of my life – a part that ended ten years ago. It feels very weird to be ten years out of Kenya, and weirder still to be ten years removed from the profoundly, awesomely ignorant little oddball I was when I was 13. Here are five things I wish I could go back in time and tell my 13-year-old self, to ease those troublesome years of high school:

1. Read this. Try not to be a douche about your shiny megatons of privilege.

2. Gender theory, sex-pos feminism, and QUILTBAG awareness. UK sex ed in the early-to-mid-2000s is entirely contraception-centric, with the admirable goal of reducing unwanted teen pregnancy, but you will not get any of the sex and gender education you so desperately need. You'll be much happier once you deconstruct the dominant cultural framing of all sexual activity as teleological toward PIV. Learn not to worry whether you're “normal” re: gender identity or sexuality.

3. It's okay to feel things and want things. You don't have to empty it all into your fiction, and you don't have to let other people dictate who you can be. Life will never be easy, but I promise you it will one day be a million times more interesting than it is right now.

4. Mother is right more often than you think, and she is wrong more often than you think. If that sounds contradictory, welcome to having a Jewish mother. You'll never get used to it.

5. Most of all: EVERYONE IS FAKING IT. ALL THE TIME.

"Non-Belonging Is My Very Substance"

"I feel that I exist only outside of any belonging. That non-belonging is my very substance."

--Edmond Jabès, From the Desert to the Book

I was born in Scotland, I went to high school there, and my parents still live there. In the US, I tell people I'm Scottish – it's just easier. However, it's not strictly accurate. Both my parents are English, so I lack the Braveheart ancestry (which is what most people in the US mean when they say “Scottish”); I spent my childhood continent-hopping, so I lack the emotional ties, personal history, and identifiable accent of one specific place (which is how a lot of people seem to relate to a place they call “home”); and, to be perfectly honest, if my parents moved away tomorrow I doubt I'd ever go back to Scotland.

I'm not really Scottish.

At first, I tried telling people I was “British” or “from the UK,” to which if not my accent then at least my passport can attest, but nobody who's really British ever says that. People claim England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales: the place they identify as being from. The UK is a political fiction – not that any nation-state isn't; but the UK seems to be a particularly unconvincing one, at least as far as hearts and minds are concerned. I certainly don't “feel” British. I have no heart-and-mind national allegiance.

I'm not really anything.

These days, I try not to be a douche about this. It is both easy and insufferable to bang on about being “a citizen of the world, you guys” when you possess both the geopolitical privilege of a UK passport and the socioeconomic privilege to take advantage of the myriad doors that passport opens. I also try not to fall into a self-pity-party about my sense of alienation. My errant childhood may have robbed me of any place to call “home,” but it also gifted me broad horizons and an unslakable wanderlust – a tradeoff I'd not reverse for anything.

Sometimes, though, I do feel a secret wish to able to participate in outpourings of jingoistic fervor.

I've been witnessing such an outpouring from certain of my Facebook friends over queen whatsit and her diamond thingamajig. I am, as that last sentence might have tipped you off, firmly in the small-r-republican camp when it comes to the whole monarchy malarkey. Even if I somehow felt myself to be authentically British, my deep cynicism regarding autocratic headship, even of the mostly-symbolic variety, wouldn't permit me to do anything other than sneer at the whole business.

But, gosh, it looks like such fun.

I feel the same sense of alienation and frustration at international sporting events. Look at all these people, who are capable of (a) claiming a national identity without feeling like an impostor and (b) giving a rat's rear-end about the event in question! They all seem to be having SUCH FUN. I wish I could have fun.

Alas, I am a fun-killing overthinker with no ability to switch off my cynicism and no sense of belonging anywhere. But, on the upside, Salman Rushdie says I am a special snowflake.

Hello, Culture Shock, My Old Friend

I've undergone transcontinental relocation enough times to know better, but I honestly thought this time would be different.

This time, I was in my twenties – old enough to cope; not like when I was a child, trying to grow up at the same time as adjusting to new places.

This time, I was moving to from the UK to the US – a paltry cultural difference. Was I not a connoisseur of American TV/movies/internets? Had I not lived from the ages of one to seven in Alabama? Surely I was entirely prepared for all aspects of life in the States.

This time, the decision was wholly mine – not dictated by my parents (whose choices, admittedly, I don't recall ever objecting to, and sometimes actively encouraged). I'd never wanted anything more than I wanted to move 5000 miles west and take my rightful place as a grad student in ~California~.

And, of course, it really did seem that way at first. I instantly felt as though I fit in. School was everything I hoped it would be. New friends were abundant and wonderful. The weather was gorgeous. For about three months, it was like being ever so slightly drunk all the damn time.

For the past three months, though, it's been more like being ever so slightly hungover all the damn time. This is literally textbook culture shock, and it's really stupid that I wasn't prepared for it. I just... thought it would be different.

I thought it would be easy, because I was comparing it to the last transcontinental upheaval. That was when we moved from Kenya to Scotland, which is a hell of a cultural transition. That was when I was thirteen, which is a hell of an age. In comparison, this move should have been a cakewalk.

I thought it would be easy, because I imagined that I would be used to this by now. I am a third culture kid. Wanderlust runs in my veins. I crave new places. Not for me the desire to be settled. Not for me the need to feel from somewhere. Not for me the constant belittling comparisons of the new place with the vastly superior place where I last lived. Me, I positively revel in the fact that everywhere on Earth I am a stranger in a strange land. You can't feel homesick if nowhere is home.

I thought it would be easy. I was wrong.