Felt an odd attack of deja vu bubbling up this morning, but then stopped to analyze the moment and realized there was a familiar song playing, which almost always evokes the feeling of “comfortable weirdness”.
Yes. I’m going to explain that.
“Comfortable Weirdness” is that feeling you get when you’re in a place completely different from home, but have adjusted enough to accept the way things are. But occasionally there’s that flash of “wait, this is NOT normal by my definition of normal”.
I’m sure there’s a psychological term.
It’s not the “where were you when a traumatic event happened” or “that song reminds me of high school”.
This is like listening to Joy to the World in a Bejing diner while eating a hamburger and fries in July, thinking nothing is odd. Or impressing people at 3:12 in the afternoon by telling them the next song on the house system at the St. Regis across from that diner will be a tired old Montovani Orchestra piece, while somehow thinking that isn’t so strange, when at 3:12 an incredulous expression crosses those people’s faces when the first scrape of the bow across the strings emanates.
Or sitting in Mexico City at a nice restaurant in Polanco, continuing to calmly eat when suddenly people start dancing, some even climbing to the bar. Then a year later you discover what had gotten them on their feet was the Macarana – a “new” sensation at home.
Or watching a rat run across the lawn in front of the outdoor porch a the Imperial Hotel in New Delhi at roughly 12:30 pm as you eat lunch, thinking “ah, he’s right on time”.
So this morning it was a song that played on the hotel TV welcome screen at the hotel I frequented in Doha. I don’t watch much TV when I travel, and often that welcome screen will stay on for hours.
It was a Saturday in Doha, I had gotten into town for a series of meetings, that started on Sunday (yes, that’s a work day there).
That infernal song was playing. But somehow it was comforting to hear something familiar. There isn’t much to do in Doha, and I had finished my prep for the next day, and about this point, the song was making me crazy.
So I decided to hop into my rental car and see how long it would take to drive to the other side of the country.
Qatar isn’t that large. About 90 minutes of driving through a glorious desert of nothingness later, I was sitting at Burger King in the middle of nowhere, 10 minutes from the opposite coast. A sandwich and coke later, I was back in the car.
As I drove through the arch of the only town on this side of the country, I noticed it displayed branding for the national gas company. I noticed that the houses were all pretty similar. When I finally reached the seashore, I finally figured out that this was what probably passed for a “company town” back in the day. Owned, operated, governed and run by the state petroleum company.
Workers were housed in modular housing; entertainment was offered according to whatever schedule and facilities the company had made available; restricted areas abounded; the streets were empty at that hour of a Saturday, even the beach area, which was quite nice and even had a workout set up a la Venice Beach in LA. Prayers echoed over the loudspeaker (a familiar soundtrack no matter where you are in the middle east).
That’s when it hit me – “This is not normal according to my definition of normal”.
But it was still a comfortable weirdness.
It’s not the memory that the song evokes. It’s the sensation.