Do you ever get the feeling that when you're searching for something, sometimes you have to go the long way around to reach your destination? I just finished this documentary about keeping culture alive across the generations. I looked at the family I married into and how they have managed to keep their traditions alive, despite being separated from the place where their roots lie, which are mainly in Puerto Rico. It's called Arroz Con Habichuelas, and some of you may have seen it. It's a metaphor about culture and how we take all these traditions and blend them together, and somehow each part can still be distinct while enhancing the experience of the whole. This stood in stark contrast to my own family. Though we had our traditions, they weren't strongly connected to any particular cultural history. And as the American story goes, I think that mine was probably the more common one.
I heard from so many who told me that they related to the narrative in one way or another, but mainly the loss and the longing, that hope that we all have to reunite with our past. I think that it almost takes going through that experience of looking at a family that is not your own, to gain perspective on the one that you were born into. And so I have found in the last month that I suddenly have this itch for the first time in my life to really know something about my past and where my people came from.
The extent of my knowledge about my family's ancestral roots stems mainly from a school project I did in third grade, which consisted of finding clippings from old magazines that somehow symbolized our ethnic ties and pasting them on poster board. I still remember asking my parents where we came from, having utterly no clue, and getting this vague explanation about being a little Scottish, a tad Irish, with a bit of German and Polish thrown into the mix. At that age, I was satisfied with this answer, but I suppose there is a reason why that one small assignment has stuck with me all these years. It wasn't until I grew older that I realized how appalling it is that we knew next to nothing about the generations that have come before us.
As time has passed, I have bumped into those roots from time to time. When my brother John went into the Marine Corps after high school and ended up in Scotland, I was quite mesmerized by the memorabilia that he returned with, but not on the level of a personal connection. The crest with our family name emblazoned on it, and the attached history of warring clans seemed exciting to an 8 year old, but it never went much beyond that. I recall discovering pierogies in the frozen foods section at the grocery store, but I didn't begin to connect that with my grandmother or any tradition that I knew of. I may be the only person on Earth that doesn't treat St. Patrick's Day as a personal excuse to engage in debauchery (though I've been known to raise a pint of Guinness or two), like so many of the non-Irish folks, all clad in green, that litter the streets mid-March of each year. And then there's the German Air Force jacket that I picked up at a surplus store in Boston years ago that I still wear from time to time, and my affinity for wheat beers and schnitzel, not to mention a fascination with long, conglomerated German terms, like gersamtkunstwert (a complete work of art).
These ties are quite tenuous to say the least, but my recent accomplishment of completing my thesis has left me with a fervor to learn more. And so I set out on this journey, which so many of my generation that I have spoken with seem ensconced in at this moment. It is a task of piecing together a history that in many cases was unraveled without much thought. I think this was for the most part unintentional on the part of my progenitors. I think that if I had the opportunity to ask my ancestors about their story, where they came from and how they got here, their response likely would be, "who me?" So often people have resisted talking about these things because they have felt, "my story isn't important. I'm nobody". But as one of my advisers pointed out during the process of making my thesis, it is often the person that persists in saying that their story is not important, that in fact has the most interesting stories to tell.
It's hard to say where this process will take me, and whether or not there is another documentary in it, but there is a sense of wonder about the prospect or digging up this past that you never even knew was there. Like my friend and colleague Chad Roberts commented at one of my screenings, referencing his own quest to find out more about his ancestry, "we're chasing ghosts". I knew that there would be those questions when I made this film about why I didn't look at my own family. I guess the only answer is, sometimes it's harder to look at yourself so directly until you have some of that perspective. And so with that in hand, its time for me to start listening to the ghosts from my own past.
I heard from so many who told me that they related to the narrative in one way or another, but mainly the loss and the longing, that hope that we all have to reunite with our past. I think that it almost takes going through that experience of looking at a family that is not your own, to gain perspective on the one that you were born into. And so I have found in the last month that I suddenly have this itch for the first time in my life to really know something about my past and where my people came from.
The extent of my knowledge about my family's ancestral roots stems mainly from a school project I did in third grade, which consisted of finding clippings from old magazines that somehow symbolized our ethnic ties and pasting them on poster board. I still remember asking my parents where we came from, having utterly no clue, and getting this vague explanation about being a little Scottish, a tad Irish, with a bit of German and Polish thrown into the mix. At that age, I was satisfied with this answer, but I suppose there is a reason why that one small assignment has stuck with me all these years. It wasn't until I grew older that I realized how appalling it is that we knew next to nothing about the generations that have come before us.
As time has passed, I have bumped into those roots from time to time. When my brother John went into the Marine Corps after high school and ended up in Scotland, I was quite mesmerized by the memorabilia that he returned with, but not on the level of a personal connection. The crest with our family name emblazoned on it, and the attached history of warring clans seemed exciting to an 8 year old, but it never went much beyond that. I recall discovering pierogies in the frozen foods section at the grocery store, but I didn't begin to connect that with my grandmother or any tradition that I knew of. I may be the only person on Earth that doesn't treat St. Patrick's Day as a personal excuse to engage in debauchery (though I've been known to raise a pint of Guinness or two), like so many of the non-Irish folks, all clad in green, that litter the streets mid-March of each year. And then there's the German Air Force jacket that I picked up at a surplus store in Boston years ago that I still wear from time to time, and my affinity for wheat beers and schnitzel, not to mention a fascination with long, conglomerated German terms, like gersamtkunstwert (a complete work of art).
These ties are quite tenuous to say the least, but my recent accomplishment of completing my thesis has left me with a fervor to learn more. And so I set out on this journey, which so many of my generation that I have spoken with seem ensconced in at this moment. It is a task of piecing together a history that in many cases was unraveled without much thought. I think this was for the most part unintentional on the part of my progenitors. I think that if I had the opportunity to ask my ancestors about their story, where they came from and how they got here, their response likely would be, "who me?" So often people have resisted talking about these things because they have felt, "my story isn't important. I'm nobody". But as one of my advisers pointed out during the process of making my thesis, it is often the person that persists in saying that their story is not important, that in fact has the most interesting stories to tell.
It's hard to say where this process will take me, and whether or not there is another documentary in it, but there is a sense of wonder about the prospect or digging up this past that you never even knew was there. Like my friend and colleague Chad Roberts commented at one of my screenings, referencing his own quest to find out more about his ancestry, "we're chasing ghosts". I knew that there would be those questions when I made this film about why I didn't look at my own family. I guess the only answer is, sometimes it's harder to look at yourself so directly until you have some of that perspective. And so with that in hand, its time for me to start listening to the ghosts from my own past.
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