View from Hunter College, 8th floor
Pico Iyer, in conversation with Hal Wake, at the PEN World Voices festival. The "faculty dining room" looks out over what you see above (roughly), and Pico recognizes right away that the audience is made of global souls like himself, to whom he is able to speak without too much explanation. People, that is, with some firsthand understanding of the difference between expat, exile, tourist, traveler, refugee and overseas worker. It may have to do with the fact that this event is one of the few PEN discussions to be admission-free.
On Sri Lanka: "Much more deeply wounded than I first expected."
On Japan: "The most science fictive of places."
"A place where they speak silence."
On Santa Barbara, California: "Comfortable, sure, but it might be that those in the developing world are spiritual millionaires in comparison."
On the next great travel writing: "It's going to places like the Port Authority, to Jackson Heights," recognizing the foreign on your doorstep. Travel writing as pure futurism, trying to anticipate the rapidly arriving. The dance of multicultural being with the multicultural world. "People talk about the clash of civilizations. I like to think of the romance of civilizations." The meeting of two cultures is more like the meeting of two people, not two armies, especially if (as Iyer says he does) cultures can be viewed as characters. They might hit it off in ways just as mysterious as two people will when they meet at a cocktail party. The power relationship in a true multicultural meeting will be that of an affair, not a war: shifting, elusive, power here on some things some times and power there for others -- the goal isn't annihilation but union.
"I compare myself to someone like V.S. Naipaul, who found despair wherever he went, where I see with an optimist's view. He feels alienated everywhere, at home nowhere; and I feel quite the opposite: at home everywhere I go, connecting with whatever part of myself fits."
We seek the vibrancy and dynamism of the cultures of the developing world.
We travel not knowing who is going to come back.
