Cultural Constellations: The Hunt for Imperfection

Compulsive traveling, city hopping and geographic exploration are forms of novelty that stimulate the senses dynamically. Most young people will tell you they have a bug to travel. If they are already on the move, they’ll tell you they need more. Few intellectually curious people are content with their travels enough to stay in one place for too long.

Travel can be addicting, especially in the sense that it progresses personal growth. When I travel, my understanding across different fields and social mediums increases rapidly. The art of travel allows you to simply feel, absorb and learn, all at the same time.

When people talk about their travels, it’s often described as a drug induced, spiritual experience. It’s always a trip–a sort of epic journey. People are painted with intricate detail, and their nuances and ambitions become strikingly apparent. The unique, local foods become sensual. Buildings become architecture, paintings become art and landmarks become iconic monuments. Anyone who hasn’t been on our trip must try it. Just one hit. Just one taste.

When I lived in Philadelphia–the city I grew up in–the streets became too familiar when I graduated college. The city’s history was rich, but I longed for surprise and discomfort culturally. When I lived in New York, the culture became cold. It was business as usual. I missed the lush nature, and envied the allowance for occasional silence. When I lived in Florence, the simple, humble lifestyle became repetitive. The food was the best I’ve had, but I found myself wishing for anything new.

I could live in Philadelphia, New York or Florence again. The grass-is-greener feeling I described was a mechanism for dealing with the fact that I wouldn’t be staying. Business, college or plain boredom had lifted me out of one culture and placed me in another. And recently, it’s happened again. I’m now in San Francisco, and I’m not sure what I feel, or what to expect next.

Traveling is a way for me to temporarily identify with a supposed ideal culture, until it becomes less ideal. A culture can’t be ideal forever, but I continue to pretend, at least internally while I’m living in a place, that it is. The fierce drive for “new” is my cultural utopia. Not good enough has become the norm.

David Byrne, one of my favorite artists, wrote an essay on his perfect city, and the prose describes his culture-obsessed antics better than mine:

The perfect city isn’t static. It’s evolving and ever changing, and its laws and structure allow that to happen. Neighborhoods change, clubs close and others open, yuppies move in and move out—as long as there is a mix of some sort, then business districts and neighborhoods stay healthy even if they’re not what they once were. My perfect city isn’t fixed, it doesn’t actually exist, and I like it that way.

The more I move around, physically or mentally, I realize this perfect environment I’m looking for doesn’t exist. I consume my media, run my business and probably even deal with relationships, the one thing that should remain static, the same way.

It’s one of those things that when you try to explain, the objective qualities become irrelevant out of context. That is, except to us.

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