21 years ago, I was in an IT training program at Morgan Stanley in New York. (We called it "MIS" back then. Business computing nomenclature wasn't fully militarized until 1994.) One night (we worked rotating 12-hour shifts), I was working with Robbie, a smart, funny Nigerian Brit masquerading as a street-hardened wide boy.* We were batting the "England versus America" ball back and forth when he called the game to an abrupt halt with a personal accusation: "You're not a real American. I know plenty of people like you back home." Since then, I've suffered this same calumny many times in many forms, ranging from the wounded nobility of "The Least American American" to the somewhat less stirring "tempermentally Canadian."
If there is any validity to this stubbornly reliable assessment, I can think of three possible reasons:
1. I'm an atheist.
2. I think chocolate is just OK.
3. I'm not a people person. I'm more of a thing person.
It's hard to say which of my qualities is most comtemptible. I can only say that as a proud American thing person, I enjoyed (though not immoderately) reading "The Perfect Thing", about the development of the iPod. Apple knows that specs are important, but how a thing curves and hefts can make it mesmerizing. The perfect thing always looks disarmingly simple at first, but the longer you look, the greater your suspicion that some world-encompassing spirit is contained inside. In a kind of aesthetic daze, you reflexively run your eyes and fingers over it, trying to unlock and consume the embedded secret, but you never quite reach it and if this sounds like pornography, that's because it is.
I have two and a half perfect things:
The Crayola 64 box was my childhood mandala. Each color has a meaning and they can be arranged to form any number of comprehensive thinking systems.
I don't know where we got this Swedish bowl, but it was the first perfect thing I recognized. It has an almost synesthetic quality. It looks the way the word "bowl" sounds and vice versa.
This rain jacket is matte black (along with snowy white, the official colors of material pornography) and all the details are smoothly hidden. If I could just remove that damn EMS logo it would be perfect.
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* He's now something of a Silicon Valley player, featured in Chris Anderson's introductory "Long Tail" article in Wired.
I like ‘temperamentally Canadian’. Funny thing is, I am Canadian and have often been called ‘An American in Spirit’. So, in the spirit of shameless American self promotion, I suggest you post your video that’s up on Russell’s site. I’ve just watched it. And loved it.
Posted by: jack | November 17, 2006 at 03:17 AM