America is unknowable…but it has a smell?

This year, on Independence Day, I picked ripe, red raspberries in my yard while listening to my usual July 4th Spotify playlist, titled “American Independence Day”. It’s a very eclectic mix, ranging from Woody Guthrie to Weird Al, from the Andrews Sisters to Sufjan Stevens, and from Queen Latifah to the Tabernacle Choir. The purpose of the playlist is to explore American regionality through music. While each song was chosen for the way it explains one particular view of America and represents a particular place, together the nearly 12 hours of music still paint an incomplete picture of our country’s diversity of experience. 

After listening for a while and ping-ponging from Vermont to Arizona to the Cumberland Gap, I was struck by the ideas in the songs “My Little Town” by Simon and Garfunkel, “Allentown” by Billy Joel, and “Brooklyn Roads” by Neil Diamond: most of us have a place that feels like home for one reason or another and its impact on our psyche is tremendous. Despite having a place that feels–or once felt–like home, many of us want to leave home to explore other options. 

Ona recent trip to Virginia’s Eastern Shore, my family and I had a truly great lunch at Mallards on the Wharf in Onancock. Our waiter, a friendly young man with black hair and light blue eyes, was a local. In the course of our conversation, he briefly referred to some of the challenges of living in a small town where everyone knows everyone and said he would like to travel. We had only just discovered his charming hometown and he already wanted to leave it, nice though he admitted it was. I could sympathize. I grew up in Virginia, too, but in a large suburb of an even larger city. My hometown had the opposite problem: it had no sense of itself and I, too, wanted out. Every place can become too small or too big. 

Once we begin to wander, though, something happens. Some of us begin to lose ourselves while others find ourselves. Simon and Garfunkel, in “America”, sing about feeling empty and aching and not knowing why. Could it be the loss of connection to people and place as they hitchhike and take busses and trains across America? Maybe beautiful scenery and counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike isn’t enough. What will the small-town Virginia waiter find when he leaves? What if he lands in Iowa? Will he miss the wharf? The incredibly fresh seafood? The way Virginians talk? Will he feel too far away from his divorced parents? Will he pine for the warm summer nights, crawdad fishing with fireflies and mosquitoes all around? Or will he discover that he feels at home in another place? 

Virginia felt like home for a long time, but, for me, nothing could match the comfortable experience of Vermont. Utah has its wonderful moments, too, but it isn’t Vermont and the people aren’t Vermonters. I’ve always suspected that I would feel very much at home in Minnesota, but I’ve only visited for short periods. No matter how much I travel, though, I can’t know a place without living there. And no matter how much I move around, I can’t know a place like someone who grew up there. And I don’t know the place I grew up in like the kids across the street do; everyone’s hometown experience is individual. I can listen to Neil sing about the shame of a bad report card and his daydreams of dragons and kings and feel a kinship, but I’ll never know his Brooklyn. 

Last summer, I spent 6 weeks in Norway, the other place where I feel at home. While I was there, I visited some friends who had lived in the US for a time. I brought some gifts, one of which was a textile. My friend held it up to his nose, breathed in deeply and exclaimed–with great pleasure–that it smelled like America. I was dumbfounded. How it that possible? Surely he knows how big a country it is! I questioned him on whether he was serious and he assured me he was. His wife concurred. But, I wondered, how can America have a smell?

I still ponder that mystery, and I thought about it again on July 4th. Do we have a scent? Are we, as a collection of states, a united country in some very real ways? Would a retired government worker in Connecticut and a famous rapper in LA recognize each other’s America? A young stay-at-home mother in northern Idaho and an investment banker in downtown Houston? A hispanic construction worker in Utah and a white mayor in Utah? Do they conceptualize and experience America in the same way? Almost certainly not. In a university course a few years back, we were discussing the concept of nationhood and the professor asked the students to come up with a symbol of America. My mostly western, white classmates agreed on the Grand Canyon. I countered, stating that probably no one I had known in Vermont would choose that as the sole American icon. 

If America has a smell, does it also have a symbol? If it has an anthem, does it also have a song? If I had to choose one song to represent America, I might settle on this rendition of “America, My Country Tis of Thee”, which includes many of the verses kids make up and sing in their youthful silliness as they begin to learn about our nation. I love this rendition for many reasons. First, it is the same tune as the very regal British “God Save the Queen/King”, but has been adapted for American purposes. Fitting. It also ranges from broad, national, widely known idealism all the way down to young, small-group, localized creativity. Maybe you remember singing some of these verses as you pumped your swing on the playground with your friends. I wonder if kids still do that–swing, sing, and make up new verses to “My Country, Tis of Thee”, making the song more relevant to their experience. 

It’s impossible to know America, but maybe we can sense it when we find something that reminds us of our own experiences, like my Norwegian friend. Maybe we can even sing America. What song best describes your America? 

Photo by Joey Csunyo on Unsplash