I’ve been thinking lately about the role of the outsider, since I’ve chosen to put myself in that position. It’s not the first time. Through the accident of birth and well meaning parents and educators, I found myself at the age of sixteen in a small liberal arts college in the heart of Maine. I did choose the college and I can’t give you a reason other than it looked perfect, exactly as my sixteen-year-old brain thought a college should look. What no one considered, or didn’t discuss with me, was that at sixteen I’d be two years younger than everyone else and while I might be academically capable, I’d be socially inept. Eighteen-year-old girls were very much older than me.
And New York Jews were a tiny minority indeed. I went looking for kinship in the “Jewish fraternity” only to discover the inanity of fraternity life, which sent me back on my own. I drove to San Francisco with two high school friends and decided to stay as they went on. I found a job and an apartment but made no friends. I loved the city, I walked, observed, kept a journal probably much like this one. I went back to college and lived alone, grew a beard, wore black turtlenecks, smoked unfiltered cigarettes. I had friends, but I also had a part to play.
I became a photographer. I was more comfortable with a camera between the world and me. I often photographed performance, documenting the creative efforts of others, but the best jobs came when I was not working alone, when I was part of a creative team, either in the theatre or on a documentary assignment. I loved those jobs but they were rare, there might have been ten in a forty-year career. A photographer is an observer, or to use Geoff Dyer’s word a “noticer.” You look at your subject, you look at the light, you try to make the two work together. If they don’t, you look at something else. It’s necessary to separate in order to observe, get too close and vision blurs.
And now, at a difficult time, I’ve chosen to come to a small village in France to write (a solitary pursuit) about myself and other outsiders (those who came here to make wine). I am of course an outsider here, separated by language, culture and tradition and I often feel lonely. People of the town are very friendly and polite, always saying hello, asking if things are going well (Ça va?), but they very rarely invite you to their homes. I have some friends among the expats, but they’re all much younger than me and their lives are centered on their families. I put myself in a somewhat uncomfortable place because I thought it was necessary to enable me to write this book, or because I wasn’t sure where else to go, but it turns out I’m really in the same place I’ve always been and perhaps I’ll soon learn whether what preceded was preparation or what continues is merely habit.
I’ll leave you with a link to an article entitled: “France, the World’s Most Depressed Nation?”