SOME THOUGHTS ON AMERICA FROM A REPATRIATED AMERICAN (Part 1)
A guest post by Dr. Erin Rose McHugh
[JMC: I solicited the post below from Dr. Erin Rose McHugh, whom I’ve known since 2007, and whose professional and personal odyssey fits beautifully with the theme of this blog – Journeys. This is the first installment of a two-part post. Dr. McHugh's bio, and a link to her personal blog, are given at the end of this installment]
As I write this, I realize that 180 days have passed since the start of the coronavirus lockdowns in Chicago. It’s a staggering thought, particularly because it both seems like no time has passed and yet the days immediately preceding the announcement make up an altogether different lifetime.
This is perhaps because I’m new to Chicago -- I’m a recently repatriated American who started living in here in January.
I left America in 2010 to begin a nine-year stint in London. It was a year after I graduated with a degree in Music performance from a small liberal arts college located thirty miles north of Austin, Texas. I fondly look back on my time in the comfort of the bubble that was this small, well-manicured and largely left-leaning campus. Within this bubble of a Liberal Arts program I learned about feminism and social justice. Back then I wanted to be an opera singer because I felt like I had communion with my audience, sharing something special in the music with the people who heard me perform. Singing was my way of connecting with the world even though I am a natural introvert. I graduated in 2009, and walked across the stage feeling like I was ready to bring about much needed change to solve the problems of the world- ones that until then I had up until then only read about in books.
However, despite the potential and hope I felt when I graduated, I don’t really have many clear memories from late 2009 until late 2010. The year between graduation and moving to London was a year of disappointment, probably the first I’d ever experienced in my young and incredibly sheltered life. Recent events have made me realize that events of that year, which in memory seem lumped together in terribleness, triggered the first of many awakenings in me.
When I graduated, the economy had been recently brought to its knees by a recession, and whilst I was lucky enough to have been offered an office manager job right after graduation, the company I worked for ended up going bankrupt six months into my tenure there.
I remember feeling overwhelmed, unimportant, and invisible as I applied for any supposedly entry-level admin job I could find, only to be told that another candidate with more experience had been hired.
Unsure of how to move forward (and desperate to pay rent) I spent half of that year waitressing to make ends meet, working 60-70 hours a week and losing sense of what time or day it was. I learned to nod and bite my tongue when female customers lashed out at me because they thought I was being artificially friendly or worse when men would say disgusting sexual things to try and embarrass me. I once felt compelled to complain to my supervisor about a table of middle-aged men because they kept asking me to sit on their laps. They were swiftly thrown out of the restaurant, but I learned that the small dispensation meant to preserve my dignity meant I lost time and money in that shift.
Various aggressions happened multiple times a week, but I realized that I needed to abandon my principles (and any pretense that the second wave of feminism ever happened) to make a little money to pay for rent and gas so I could continue existing just to bring people food.
In the United States, we call this good customer service. In reality, it is merely a survival mechanism for those of us within the service industry to cope with the public who have been made to believe that their money allows them to get away with anything.
That year, I learned about the real pillar of the U.S. economy: The American consumer needs to be made to believe they are King. So I spent a year understanding what it feels like to be a blue-collar worker in America- invisible, undervalued, and yet seen as essential to the operations of the shop or restaurant they worked in. It’s something that I thought about when everything was closed due to COVID -- the inequality of wealth distribution between the consumer and those who work in the service industry is staggering in America but our country is driven by these small transactions in shops and restaurants.
Throughout that year, I felt the fire and excitement from the possibilities of a musical and socially significant life dwindle to nothing. I only felt my aching feet and unease in the pit of my stomach. I couldn’t see beyond the next days, looking forward to having a day off so I could simply sit in my room and not have to force my smile. I didn’t have the energy to sing and felt nothing when I listened to recordings. It made me miserable, not being able to connect with something that used to bring me joy simply because I was so exhausted physically and emotionally.
I now know I was feeling heartbreak, and disillusionment. This is the “real world” that I was sheltered from by my comfortable upbringing and Liberal Arts college campus, the degree from which was apparently of no use to Austin-area offices.
I desperately wanted a way out from my new reality and found it when I was offered a place on the Masters in Vocal Performance course the Royal College of Music in London. The promise of grad school lifted my spirits- suddenly the world seemed full of possibility.
I’d be an American abroad. I’d have a comparatively exotic accent and a story to tell. I’d get to make music and life would be beautiful again.
Of course- this move ended up not quite being the ride off into the sunset I imagined. Adjusting to life in London as an American had its own challenges. London is multicultural and vibrant but it is also vast, expensive, and the classical music scene is largely unaccommodating to outsiders. Despite our shared language there are copious differences between our respective cultures, subtleties in English behavior which result in social cues being missed.
For example, the English are polite as a baseline, but one quickly learns that politeness disguises displeasure and anger. (I often wonder if this is a cue from the Romance languages, with use formal tenses to address complete strangers -- a post for another time). You learn after time (as I did) that when a Brit cares about you, their politeness vanishes.
There are certain behaviors in the U.S. which are seen to demonstrate a lack of forethought, something which is rude to British manners. Wearing one’s heart on her (or his) sleeve is seen as vulgar, presumptive and too comfortable. That’s the pinnacle of acceptable Englishness- humility. Don’t assume you can share too much.
At my music college some people mistook my entrepreneurial, can-and-will-do-anything American spirit for rudeness: I didn’t know my place. My eagerness was met with many responses of “who do you think you are” and “sit down and wait your turn.”
Even though I’m an introvert, it took years to adjust to this new culture. However, once I was able to navigate these social cues I didn’t want to leave- my determination perhaps compounded by the fact that within the first year of my living in London I met my future husband. I soon had a walking, talking model of Englishness from which I could learn.
I quite literally found my tribe in London because I married an Englishman.
After a couple of years, I soon fell into a comfortable routine with British manners. I soon noticed that when I spoke to Americans while visiting family, they often commented on my quasi-British accent. I didn’t hear it myself and felt embarrassed- I didn’t want anyone to assume that I was performing my honorary Britishness (this is of course very British of me)
However, any embarrassment disappeared when I realized I didn’t identify with Americans after years living in London.
Not surprisingly, about mid-way into my life in London I appreciated why the rest of the world dislikes Americans. The difference in U.S. and British people was often put into jarring contrast in London because of tourists (who are obnoxious anywhere) and foreign exchange students (who act like students). The Americans in London were loud and obnoxious by comparison to the restrained, weary Londoners. The ignored the flow of pedestrian traffic, lumbered slowly through the street, and lack any kind of humility in their interactions, making them seem rude to everyone around them. The U.S. accent brings out a unique resonance in the voice, one that cuts and carries through the din of a restaurant or street noise. I didn’t see myself in these people, and felt more and more connected with British manners and customs.
Six years into my time in London and I felt foreign again.
Donald Trump was elected, his campaign efforts propelled by a cult following of people in red hats and an election slogan “Make America Great Again,” appealing perhaps to Americans dissatisfied with some aspect of their status in the wealthiest country in the world. The slogan of course plays upon certain people’s deep-seated racist and misogynist beliefs they held all along, feelings which remained hidden under their skin until they felt emboldened by Trump’s behaviors.
As an American abroad during that time I often reflect on the morning I found out- I remember that set my alarm early because I thought I’d be waking up to the news that we’d elected the first female President- something which would start me off right for the entire week.
My heart sank when I saw red: a visualization of the electoral votes going to Republicans.
I once again felt renewed embarrassment to be American.
I couldn’t fathom how Americans ignored the recording of him bragging about sexual harassment or how they justified the complete absence of compassion, lack of self-awareness, male chauvinism this man demonstrated time and time again, unchecked in full view of the media. Heads turned when I spoke -- I quickly realized that my difference announced itself to strangers but this time they pitied me. Donald Trump epitomized the things about Americans that the English hate. When I spoke, they heard something connected to Trump. I couldn’t stand feeling so alien. Being abroad after Trump was elected made me feel grateful that I was far away from the sickness growing in America. I also wondered how long it would be until his incompetence would directly affect my own life. <to be continued>
Erin McHugh is a musicologist and arts administration professional living in Chicago, USA. She received her PhD from the Royal College of Music in 2018, supported by a Douglas Hay Award and a Lucy Ann Jones Award. A trained opera singer herself, Erin's research interests span in the fields of gender theory, performance studies, vocal pedagogy, and aesthetics. Her doctoral thesis, "The Vocality of the Dramatic Soprano Voice in Richard Strauss’s Salome and Elektra," explores gender, philosophy, and vocal production in the early operas of Richard Strauss. You can follow her at her blog: "The Ex-Pat."
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