Recently, I was invited to perform on a piece about my hometown, which was difficult. I move around, a lot and been fortunate enough to call both the jungles of Belize and the austere coldness of Northern England home. Consequently, this has left me without a hometown and it was from this perspective I write:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A hometown is that place, anywhere, where you can go<\/p>\n
and know that down a forgotten corridor, in a mess of<\/p>\n
edifices and run-down, abandoned structures that a<\/p>\n
small bakery sits, untouched, and you can recommend<\/p>\n
the very best pastry to a total stranger, because this<\/p>\n
space, these collections of builidngs and people and<\/p>\n
their names are you, are a part of the things that make you.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
I was on a shuttle, at midnight, travelling from JFK to<\/p>\n
Grand Central when a man asked me where I frequent<\/p>\n
in the City, and I couldn\u2019t recommend anywhere but the<\/p>\n
Met, or Broadway, or nothing he couldn\u2019t get from a brochure.<\/p>\n
Welcome to New York, and I suppose I\u2019m as much as<\/p>\n
tourist as you, sir.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
I don\u2019t have a hometown, don\u2019t have a space I can<\/p>\n
traipse around, and know where to find peace, where<\/p>\n
I feel comfortable. All I\u2019ve ever had is my memories<\/p>\n
which are the only way anything feels familiar to me.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
I was little in Los Angeles, when my parents had escaped<\/p>\n
Belize to marry one another and, sitting in a shit shack,<\/p>\n
somewhere in South central Los Angeles, a woman my<\/p>\n
family knew very well told my mother about playing the<\/p>\n
cheque game; she wrote bad cheques and tried to make<\/p>\n
it to the bank, because that\u2019s how she lived, in every city<\/p>\n
she went. That shit houses, this woman who my mind\u2019s eye<\/p>\n
can no longer focus on feels familiar. It feels like a beginning.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
Sitting in car, driving passed wide, open fields in the shotgun<\/p>\n
seat of my best friend\u2019s car, some voices shrill, some resonant,<\/p>\n
following the beautiful melodies of Adele\u2019s \u201cHometown Glory,\u201d I<\/p>\n
understand a hometown. Moving, constantly, burning petrol,<\/p>\n
sitting, watching as signs, and ground falls into view, and falls<\/p>\n
behind us is my hometown. It was a comfort and a continuity.<\/p>\n
This car, red, the people, brilliant, the sunset, glorious, are what<\/p>\n
I would recommend to you, if you ever find yourself in Texas.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
The coast of Yorkshire, Scarborough, which to me felt was a<\/p>\n
stranger, and I\u2019ve only ever seen but once is to me a hometown.<\/p>\n
The stormy moors of Yorkshire, the tumultuous seas, and the icy<\/p>\n
embrace of the water\u2019s breathe on my lips felt like a long lost friend.<\/p>\n
Or maybe it felt like the park you go to with you parents as a child.<\/p>\n
So much to do, running around and seeing other little people,<\/p>\n
all enjoying their lives, and inviting me to frolic with them.<\/p>\n
I made friends that day, a Polish girl, a girl from Latin America,<\/p>\n
and a boy who\u2019d lived in England all his life. Our parents<\/p>\n
bought us a stuff animal, Penis the Dolphin.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
Every aeroplane feels a little like home, especially take off<\/p>\n
and landing. The jarring rumble of a plane escaping into the<\/p>\n
air, and the view you get thirty minutes before landing.<\/p>\n
All cities are strange and in that become familiar to me. Strange<\/p>\n
cities are my nomadic lifestyle\u2019s one constant.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
Bruxelles feels like a hometown because even though I couldn\u2019t<\/p>\n
take you anywhere beside a tiny military base that houses a<\/p>\n
school for the children of Americans working for NATO, it was<\/p>\n
boring, the way you feel bored when you go home. There was<\/p>\n
a consistency and an ease with which I moved about, and everyone<\/p>\n
I ever met there was from somewhere different, like me.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
My hometown is me, and all the experiences I\u2019ve ever known because,<\/p>\n
you return to our hometowns and we understand them and I<\/p>\n
can only ever return to myself.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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