Running for Mayor of Elsewhere
June 8, 2011
Running for Mayor of Elsewhere
June 7, 2011
Shockingly few Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 intend to fulfill their civic duties or even are aware that they have one, according to a national study sponsored by the University of Notre Dame that concluded this past Spring. The survey asked not only if those questioned intend to vote or to advocate for a political cause, but also if they were interested in running for public office in the future. In fact, only a mere four percent of those surveyed stated that they indeed felt obliged to be involved. Of that four percent, all were male, strikingly or perhaps alarmingly, because they will most likely succeed in their ambitions with little to challenge them in political discourse. The paucity of a response makes me ask: Where is everybody else? I feel like asking in particular: Where are the women? I am surprised that the survey indicates that few to none are likely to show up to work for the blindfolded lady. Isn’t this the golden age of women in the university and in the workplace who, in greater numbers than men, are receiving advanced degrees and finding fulfilling work? Shouldn’t they above all insist upon a voice among our future leaders? Where are those lavishly gifted and talented young Americans whose loving parents, as one father recently reflected, felt like they were buying a new car each year and driving it off a cliff to pay for their college education? Shouldn’t they know better than to abandon the future of our democracy to decay and indifference?
I think I found them, at least some of them, in a storefront called Elsewhere. Outside one politico was in drag and claimed to be Darryl Hall of Hall and Oates. He was waving a little flag and invited us in to participate in the political campaigns for the Mayor of Elsewhere. Having given the baccalaureate sermon at Elon University that afternoon I was disposed to think of the future as more full of hope than one of no-shows to democracy. My hosts, Philip and Betsy Craft, to savor downtown Greensboro drove by the Civil Rights Museum with the famous Woolworth all-white counter where two young black men stuck to their stools and their rights. After parking they chose to meander close to Elsewhere. Inside the studied spectrum and textures of fabric ends collected over the past century by the curator’s grandmother Sylvia, who took over a five and dime in the Depression and kept the faded name “Caroline’s” above the window.
Plastic toys all yellow and carefully stacked and graded by size, filled a miniature loggia of shelf above an apartment of similarly stacked toys in green, then a section of blue toys and red and so forth amplified into a universe of interpreted minutiae throughout what at first seemed just a small storefront. A group of sashed politicos in red practiced their campaign song “We are the World,” playing on an old turntable in a suitcase including Darryl Hall. We asked how he and John Oates kept on making those hits working together when they hated each other in fact. “Politics is how people get along,” says Daryll. Perhaps cursed politics is what makes the Philadelphia sound so good. Someone knew that Hall and Oates was from Philly. When “We are the World” stops we remember Man Easter and start to sing it. It sounds mean and ironic after “We are the World.”
More candidates come. A woman in Blue. “What do you stand for?” I ask. “Freedom and the Future,” she says. I don’t seem interested. I am looking for some wine, which they are offering in the back in a kitchen of sorts and she offers to get some for us. Her aide-de-camp puts on a plastic buttoniere. Betsy heads off in one direction and Philip and I head her off at the pass and it leads us to a back alley. A jumble of loose bricks make a path with ruts between antebellum buildings , It is not wide enough for a car. The aide-de-camp comes out with a red wine. As she hands it to me she says, “you will notice the glass has the U.S. Constitution on it.” So it does. We talk a bit about where she is from and step out of her fictional character for a moment. The aide-de-camp of the other candidate comes out and I ask what his favorite car is. She runs and comes out with the answer. “1989 Ford Truck(? can’t remember which model)” “What color?” She runs in again and comes out with “rusted red.” “Gun rack?” She enjoys the relay. “Not for guns, but yes I would have a gun rack.” “What kind of gun would you have if you had your druthers.” “12-gauge” The answer comes from the candidate himself. “In case I have to shoot some zombies in the coming rapture.” It was my question that I was given to ask later on during the Q and A. “What is your stance on the rapture.” I wonder if he knew my question. I sip some wine and down at the end of the alley comes a black kid running. I don’t know if it was fast or slow. A policeman appears behind him, a young man running the same speed. The kid came toward me and I tried to tackle him without spilling the wine. My arm is enough to slow him down. A few feet beyond the policeman gets him down and tasers him. The kid stutters out a “no, no, no,” and you could feel that electrical pulse.
The candidates and their aides-de-camp slip inside. The young woman comes back with a wet paper towel to pat down the bit of wine on the shirt and the pants. They ask me why I didn’t panic. “I live in the Bronx” I say. “I guess I am used to it.” The black kid and the policeman have been left to their business. I am inside too when I see the policeman with a young Irish face not unlike my brother, also a cop, leading out his prisoner. He looks calm. They look calm. I feel calm. The candidates are bringing me plastic flowers. “I guess I am for law and order instinctively.” I wonder if the kid was on drugs and that is why he was so easy to slow up. He didn’t smell like drugs. I wondered what race relations were like here. There was something gentle and caring about the cop.
Off to the side is a chest of drawers painted a light blue. On the bottom right is a word in Greek cut into the pine. I can read the letters: υπερυδατωση Hyper DA toe say. There is an accent over the alpha. I pull out the drawer and it is filled with clear apothecary bottles set carefully in foam. I lift one bottle and it reads “spilled from Jack and Jill’s Pail.” Another reads “Left over from the Flood.” I am wondering what the word could mean. Weeks later a Greek friend has written back an email.
The word means- too much water, like the opposite of dehydrated. We have the word “inundated.” This would be “hyperdated,” It seems like the right word. Strange how history is synthesized and swishing around in a drawer among all the playthings the populate “Elsewhere.” The unexpected arrival of the real makes the make believe run for mayor of Elsewhere cling to somewhere, someone. Like Bottom’s Dream in Midsummer Night’s Dream, who knows what we conjure in the midst of our playthings. Some more of this serious play in the green world of Greensboro stumbles over a soulful politics that says we are more thoughtful and attentive than we are aware. We say goodbye to George Scheer who runs Elsewhere and head of to dinner. It is full night and a train rumbles behind a nearby building always with some other more important place to go than here.
Andrew O’Connor
June 7, 2011
