You Can Call Me Al McGuire: Ode to Wisconsin, Paul Simon, and College Basketball
A man walks down the street
It’s a street in a strange world
Maybe it’s the third world
Maybe it’s his first time around
Doesn’t speak the language
He holds no currency
He is a foreign man
He is surrounded by the sound, sound
Cattle in the marketplace
Scatterings and orphanages
He looks around, around
He sees angels in the architecture
Spinning in infinity
He says, ‘Amen and Hallelujah!’
-third verse of “You Can Call Me Al” by Paul Simon, 1986
Legend has it that Paul Simon wrote this hit about a midlife crisis, while other speculation suggests he was inspired by his travels in South Africa during apartheid. The song tells of a man going to the same place at different times, confused and disoriented, yet with some level of optimism, even delight.
For me, “You Can Call Me Al” has always been about Marquette. As a perpetually shell-shocked, impressionable freshman in the pep band, I assumed it was written for His Excellency, his Majesty, his Holiness, Al McGuire. We first played it at Al’s Run, and as I had never heard the song before, I had no idea it even had words. I just knew everyone really, really liked it. It would become a silly pickle of happiness, one I learned to recognize and adore in the midst of freshman chaos and confusion. As a sophomore, it brought me the sensation of pride and joy; real-time college nostalgia in the making, a rare treasure to know that these are, in fact, the good old days.
The first two verses detail the man’s midlife crisis with bemused instrumentals. The third verse gets weirder. He’s a foreign man, unable to communicate in words, surrounded by sounds and chaos, and eventually finds “angels in the architecture.” This is- allegedly- the part about South Africa. It also sounds like our Jesuit “finding God in all things.” Nothing is definite, everything’s a maybe, a someday, kind-of situation. This song is ridiculous, wonderful, and catchy as hell.
And now I’m back, coincidentally from South Africa. I still love Paul Simon. But I’m back to a new, frightening feeling I can’t quite articulate. I’m back to the place I sorely missed, and now yearning for the sight of Table Mountain during the golden hour. I’m finally here, and it’s exactly the same but totally different. I am certainly different, and people aren’t the same as when I left. I know where things are on campus, mostly, but the changing tides of 21st century construction continue to give me daily reminders that life went on without me.
Everybody talks about the culture shock when you go experience another culture. It’s very real, it hit me hard six months ago, and I got through it. There were vague warnings about reverse culture shock that I brushed away in stride. Clearly, I had forgotten about my own freshman culture shock to college across the country, and some very vital parts of my character. I have zero chill, and struggle to adapt to change.
I signed up to take a linguistics class abroad, hoping to learn about the roots of Bantu languages and de-Anglicize, de-Romanticize, de-colonize my mind. I was not happy to learn this course was on non-verbal communication with Western cultures. It was boring and dull, easy for American me to imagine communicating with people like me. It seems this course has come back to haunt me. Somewhere on this path, I changed. I feel like the third verse of “You Can Call Me Al,” hopefully on the verge of acceptance.
Here’s the line that hits me: doesn’t speak the language. It’s amazing I had to go to a country with eleven official national languages to learn that an enormous part of linguistic communication isn’t spoken at all. I’d heard the phrases before, “it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it,” and “the medium is the message,” but they continue to resonate and jive around my brain more and more, every day. We learned in my linguistics class that for many Westerners, especially those speaking American English, the unspoken often means far more than the words themselves.
I have forgotten how to speak this language, in not just the verbal and linguistic, but also in the visual, aural, gestural, and spatial expectations of the culture. Or at the very least, I’m painfully out of practice. I chose South Africa to get out of my comfort zone, and I spent the whole semester challenging everything I assumed and believed to be true about the world, the people around me, my values, and my very identity. In the process, I forgot how to speak Marquette. Oh, it’s weird to be touching people and making constant physical contact? I should be using utensils to eat, and not rely on my fingers? I can flush the toilet as many times as I choose? What do you mean we don’t recycle? I talk weird now, too loud now, and interrupt too much? My clothes are out of style, and clash? I can’t use African time anymore?
(African time is the best and worst thing on earth. It’s not a real time zone, but instead slang for the unhurried, holistic concept of time, usually in cities in South Africa and other areas where the Western elite and businesspeople still spend a lot of time. Think of (racist) stereotypes for Caribbean culture- á la “on island time.” I hated African time at first, and how nothing ever started on time. I miss it more than ever, and would give so much to have another week to live, work, study in it. It took me ages to grasp that this wasn’t a vacation mentality and avoidance technique, it was a way of life compatible with sufficiency for the whole self.)
I’d like to drop the stress and bring African time to Milwaukee, but I just can’t seem to. Paul Simon relaxed when he accepted the busy foreignness in African time, but he just reverted back to the chorus. Paul, what comes after that? What happens when the man returns?
I’m out of touch with my first and second languages, of American English and the competitive, judgmental tongue of the middle class, middle tier university. And truthfully, maintaining this (to my emotional detriment) by refusing to assimilate back. I’m wounding my communication skills by keeping silent in some conversations, and refusing to be silent in others, effectively ignoring the socially appropriate. It’s awkward and uncomfortable, but for what might be the first time, I’m beginning to mind the morality of my actions and speech as bigger priorities than being liked and fitting in. Is it working? Is it even worth it?
I don’t know the polite way, or the kind way, to tell well-intentioned, humor-minded friends that words like ‘ratchet’ and ‘ghetto’ and ‘hood’ are racial slurs that do in fact support violent cycles of dehumanization, and that their discomfort in anything remotely political is inherently racist. I don’t know how to share this newfound awareness without ostracizing my loved ones, making them even more resistant to new ideas, and ruining desperately needed comradery. I don’t want to bitch out my roommates for food waste, as the gigantic scope of food scarcity all over the world, all over the city and all over our campus, is finally dawning on me. I don’t know how to positively, effectively teach active anti-racism, social consciousness and self-awareness in way that will educate more it offends when I am just beginning to come to terms with how much I personally benefit from exploitation and white supremacy. I don’t know how- and I don’t even care- to pick up all these silly social cues and somehow tacitly agreed upon norms for how to feel cool but also normal in the mind-fuck that is college. Who even has the energy to pick all this up when you are out of the dorms and live off campus, and must shop, cook, clean, and commute with spare time you never had before? I know college isn’t an assimilation funnel, and I know that everyone around me is just trying to get by and be their best self.
Where are the angels in the architecture? When does the chaos and discomfort and disorientation and non-synchronization- dissonance?- rejoin the beat? I want to be back but I don’t want all the ignorance and unconscious biases back. I want to dance to Paul Simon with clarity of sound, this enormous weight gone from my tired shoulders. It feels like I hold no currency in social capital anymore, and it’s not even worth it to miss it, but I find myself still doing so. Why does it feel so foreign to be back in one of my favorite homes?
It’s “You Can Call Me Al” déjà vu, but as if there’s a major minor chord in the way. I felt foreign six months ago, and I’m feeling foreign again. Where is the optimism I learned to embrace over the previous two years? I brought it to South Africa- did I leave it there? I can’t keep trying to be my own bodyguard, and I can’t keep acting like the people around me are long lost, distant friends. Where is the amen, and hallelujah? Are you there, Al McGuire? It’s me, Amy. I’m back from South Africa, and I need your celestial, championship-winning wisdom.
English 3210/Spring 2019
