For the past few days everything has struck me as completely hilarious. It’s that stranger-in-a-strange land complex that occurs when you realized how suddenly of your own country you really are. And India just shows me up as wholly American every moment I walk outside. From crossing the street: here you really should just stay your course and not stop when an oncoming vehicles appears to make a beeline in your direction, or ordering drinks (‘big chai?’ is the stock question for Westerners ordering at the tea stall who are used to something bigger than thimble full), I never feel so American as when I’m overseas.
This of course is a mixed blessing: often that translates as feeling a little too big, too loud, too set in a certain way, but it also makes me appreciate the differences in this big old world that much world. Eastern mind, collectively minded as it is, is oh-so-differently organized than I/me Western mind. Traffic is the prime example. It’s really just one big weave. Oncoming traffic knows to cede way as necessary, albeit while never coming to a stop. I used to bike race, and the phrase, ‘hold your line’ often pops into my head as I’m crossing the crosswalk-free street…that is stay in your own invisible lane, but stay loose enough to swerve for the random surprise the road offers….which of course applies to life in general.
Deborah Crooks (www.DeborahCrooks.com) is a writer, performing songwriter and recording artist based in San Francisco whose lyric driven and soul-wise music has drawn comparison to Lucinda Williams, Chrissie Hynde and Natalie Merchant.
Singing about faith, love and loss, her lyrics are honed by a lifetime of writing and world travel while her music draws on folk, rock, Americana and the blues. She released her first EP “5 Acres” in 2003 produced by Roberta Donnay, which caught the attention of Rocker Girl Magazine, selecting it for the RockerGirl Discoveries Cd. In 2007, she teamed up with local producer Ben Bernstein to complete “Turn It All Red” Ep, followed by 2008’s “Adding Water to the Ashes” CD, and a second full-length CD “2010. She’s currently working on a third CD to be released in 2013.
Deborah’s many performance credits include an appearance at the 2006 Millennium Music Conference, the RockerGirl Magazine Music Convention, IndieGrrl, at several of the Annual Invasion of the GoGirls at SXSW in Austin, TX, the Harmony Festival and 2009’s California Music Fest, MacWorld 2010, Far West Fest and many other venues and events. She toured the Northwest as part “Indie Abundance Music, Money & Mindfulness” (2009) with two other Bay Area artists, and followed up with “The Great Idea Tour of the Southwest in March 2010 with Jean Mazzei.
