6/26/2003 08:24:00 PM

we have to begin reacquiring a taste for the local.

the local was once the primary way we interacted with the world.

(
remember when you were a kid and you would go to someone's house to play or spend the night? there was always that moment where you recognized the differences between your family environments: the smell of the house, bed time, television shows, meal rituals and the like. in recognizing the differences you began to distinguish between what was local to your family. now, of course, there were areas that overlapped between your friend's home and yours, but there was always something meaningful about your home that was not present while away.
)

without the local there is a certain homelessness that precludes meaning--an exiling at the hands of our chosen lifestyle mobility. this mobility does not require physical travel. lifestyle mobility is to privilege the celebrity, the processed, the homogenized, the popular, the brand name, the nationally syndicated over the known, the organic, the fresh, the indigenous, your own name... lifestyle mobility is convenient to the point of convenience determining value. when demand is consistently invested in that which is labeled for individual sale the soul of human existence is erased by the commerce of lifestyle exchange.

we have to begin reacquiring a taste for the local.

local is synonymous with both new and old; fresh and classic. in the music scene the local is the pre-famous cool that drives people to clubs in sub-zero temperatures. local is the excitement over hearing a hometown comic at a Tuesday night open mic rival the multimillion dollar HBO production from the night before. local is the mid-wife running across a well-manicured lawn to coach the patent lawyer's first baby out of the womb. local is the old man whistling as he unpacks the crates of corn from his battered Chevy at the farmer's market next to the loft conversion. local is a billion other instantiations of human passion, creation, commerce and contentment that values the passion of human engagement over the anonymity of prepackaged convenience.

...

{not that the prepackaged is to be universally shunned.
i say not shunned--just engaged more thoughtfully....
we must begin to reacquire a taste for the local.}