1 :: scholar of cities ::
[posted 9/22/00]
Jakob stands on the platform and waits for the train that will carry him to another point in the city. An advertising placard on the other side of the tracks indicates that today is “Take Cyndi Lauper to Work Day.” Jakob thinks: Oh daddy dear, you know you're still number one. A CTA train going in the wrong direction roars in and shudders into stillness. Passengers disembark, and a recorded voice speaks. Doors are closing, watch the closing doors.
Jakob thinks: Girls just want to have fun, oh girls, they want to have fun. Great, now that's going to be in my head all day.
It doesn't matter, he tells himself. You're supposed to be conscious of pop music; that's part of what you do. Jakob likes to envision himself as a scholar, and it's okay, nowadays, for scholars to give their attention to any sort of message the culture generates. Someone in his program is doing their thesis on webpages dedicated to boy bands.
He's in the first year of a two-year Master's in American Studies, one of the scholarly disciplines that Marshall McLuhan cleared the way for back in the sixties. He feels like it's all very legitimate, except for when he doesn't. American Studies, the girl at that party had said, what is that, anyway? He had stared down at the words Extra Pale printed on his beer bottle and mumbled something. When he looked up again he realized she'd tuned out. He continued to speak anyway, and his attempt to provide a sensible answer grew more and more convoluted, until it became obvious that he was now that guy: that guy at every party who backs a woman into a corner and assaults her with far more detail than she could possibly have wanted. She nodded along diligently; bless her poor heart. Later he wished he had given her a sound-bite, something brief and cryptic that would have made him seem cool. Looking at the field of information, trying to detect shifts.
An image, here, of Freya. He thinks she's working today. He can't remember what days Fletcher told him. The wrong-direction train is long gone now. He can hear the grind of the new train coming before he sees it. Sound is a kind of television. That's what they really want—
