Ah, Austin.
I swear, one of my favorite cities in the United States. The hill country is exquisite, the food is fabulous, the music scene is ubiquitous. If it weren’t for the heat, I could live there. (Don’t worry – you couldn’t dislodge me from Boston with dynamite, but one always wants options.)
My wife and I were visiting a friend of ours who teaches at Texas State. Let’s call her Not Her Real Name (NHRN for short). NHRN is a child of academics, and she can’t imagine doing anything besides being a professor, and it’s taking her a while to get used to the idea that Austin might be where she’s landed for good. We go down there to cheer her up every so often.
Now, those of you who know me ought to be yelling at the screen right now, since, for moments at a time, I can be uproariously funny, but I’m not exactly the sort of person you’d turn to for a long-term lift in life, if you know what I mean. But oddly enough, when we go to see NHRN, good things happen. Really good things.
For instance. I did a song swap with a colleague of NHRN’s who has a band down in Austin. He plays a happy hour at this roadhouse in San Marcos (really – bar, pool tables, corrugated steel walls, railroad freight car rolling doors, the whole bit), and we traded songs for a nice long time. Lots of fun. For a long time, this colleague has been teasing NHRN, who’s a classically-trained violinist, to come play fiddle with him, and she did it for the first time that night, and had a blast.
And while we were there, she got her tenure letter. Job security in academia is a hard-fought privilege, as most of you know, and she’s been uneasy about it – she’s a good scholar, and it’s a good department, but she’s been struggling to finish her first book. But now, she can relax.
Another night, we went out to hear this marvelous swing band, Paris 49, at the Contintental Club. Five guys playing big band standards, Django Reinhart, French cabaret, all up-tempo swing style, with kids (okay, they were clearly eligible to vote, but I’m an old fart by now) swing dancing. NHRN’s been going there for quite a while, and for the first time ever, somebody asked her to dance. It’s as if the city comes alive for her when we visit.
I know it’s a little artificial – you’ve got company, you change your schedule, you do things you wouldn’t ordinarily do. Hell, the first time I ever walked the Freedom Trail was when somebody came to visit me. But these are things that NHRN could be doing all the time; she could play fiddle with her colleague every Friday, she could get asked to dance every time she goes to hear Paris 49. I’m glad that we can make her happier in her city – but she could make herself happier too.