I have become inured to the fact that visitors to the United States harbor a reasonable anxiety about the saturation of our culture by crime and violence. Americans and there guns. Americans and their drive by shootings. When this subject comes up, on ABBAmail (yes, we discuss even that on the list), or elsewhere, I neither dismiss these concerns, nor invest very heavily in them. For american crime has not touched me much in my personal life.
Or has it? This morning I walked down to Scandinavium to pick up my konsert tickets. On the stroll back toward my hotel, I started hard at a bikestand along the Avenyn. Some of these bikes were chained to the stand, but many were not. Are these people crazy? How long will it take for a bike to be stolen?
When I had lunch today, in a little restaurant on Victoriagaten in Göteborg, I laid my little fanny pack on the seat beside me. I had put my phrase book, a pen, my headphones (tape player was in my shirt pocket) and my black CD disk box into the fanny pack. Of these items, the most important was the disk box, for it held not only Disk 2 of the boxed set and my CD of Cecilia Vennersten, but also about 7 CD booklets from various ABBA and related recordings. I was carrying these because I wanted to be ready in case:
1. I could find
or talk my way into Scandinavium during a rehearsal, and
2. I encountered
Karin Glenmark, and
3. I retained
the courage to approach her for an autograph, and
4. Noticing my calm and interesting chat with her, Benny came over to meet me.
(Okay, if you are going to fantasize, do it right). Moreover, one of the booklets belongs to fellow ABBAmailer Bob Eber, again, just in case.
But let me return to the restaurang. The meal I had chosen was offered as a complete menu, with drycka and salade. Although I was a stuttering fool when dealing with the quite pleasant waitress, my eyes at least were working hard. From the other tables, the knowing diners were getting up and going into some back room, and coming back with their salads. Ah, a hidden away salad bar. So I followed suit and headed out of the dining room, and through a backwall doorway toward the hidden salad room.
I was literally crossing the threshold of that doorway when it struck me: I had left my fanny pack at the table! And here, being from the US and with some experience of its cities and its modern problems, I began to fret. Shall I go back? Shall I skip the salad. Is the fanny pack hidden, or nearly so. Could I assemble my little salad in less than 20 seconds?
Well, the short of it is that my fanny pack was there when I returned. And as a peered out the window, ate my mackrill, and watched others sit down, order, eat, and leave all in 18 minutes, I began to consider the way that crime, or the expectation of crime, permeates my life.
Is it the case that the norm for Swedes in Göteborg is that they are safe and that theft is an insignificant rarity? Are their newspapers filled with something other than crime and lurid reportage of automobile/airplane tragedies? Are the urban perils that Bjorn considers in Tiger and I am the City neither external nor criminal?
And if this is so, is it any wonder that the US appears, from this side of the Atlantic, as an roiling anarchy, where great adventures, stupendous risks, and convulsive violence makes one hesitate to visit? Might Swedes think that in America, street gangs will literally eat you?
Some days later, I was speaking with my Swedish friend. She tells me that in Stockholm, crime is on the rise. Murders are happening and are in the news. She said it is getting bad. You may think this is all relative, but she lived for several years in the U.S., and her context of reference was the U.S.
I noticed a lot of graffiti in Stockholm, on buildings and Pendletog.
In America, there was a time when crime had a different, less ominous shape and presence. Things changed.
One is sorry to think that this may be happening for Sweden right now. Perhaps it is starting in Stockholm. Perhaps it will spread; perhaps not.
I hope America is not somehow responsible for this.... culturally.
It takes a while for
people to acclimate to social and cultural changes. As I make my
dumb way through little moments in Sweden, it is clear to me that people
have not yet been corrupted by the presence of crime to the point
that they are obviously vigilant about it. At the train station in
Göteborg, as I waited for the train to Stockholm, a youngish fellow
slapped his blue duffel bag down against a post, right in front of me,
and walked off. I don't know where he went, but he was gone at least
ten minutes. He didn't fear that the bag would disappear. I
hope he doesn't have to.