Helen and Sam's Story
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Sadie (voiceover): This is Accentricity Series Two: The Moving Project. Stories about migration, language, and identity from around the world.
Over the past year we've been teaching a free online course on how to podcast and helping a group of people to tell personal stories about the experience of moving from one place to another. This is Helen and Sam’s story.
Helen decided that she’d like to explore ideas around migration, home, and belonging by telling the story of her friend Sam. Sam grew up in America but left at a young age and has now lived in nine countries around the world. He’s found one place that particularly feels like home to him: Berlin.
First, you’ll hear Helen’s 10-minute audio piece in which she explores what it means to look for a home and to choose one that gives you what you need at that time in your life. Afterwards, you’ll hear a conversation we had at the end of the project where we talk a bit about telling someone else’s story and exploring your own feelings by exploring someone else’s. But first, here’s Helen’s audio piece.
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Helen (voiceover): Where is home for you? Is it where you were born, a place that you found later in life, or wherever you happen to be laying your head that night? I was born on the southwest coast of England. Growing up in a small seaside town, I never quite felt like I belonged. It didn’t feel like the town matched my idea of myself or that I could really be who I wanted to there. For as long as I can remember I was set on leaving this sleepy place by the sea and stepping out into the world to find the place that really would feel like home.
In 2008 age 21, I was working as a teacher in Saigon, Vietnam. There I met Sam. He had left his hometown in North America five years previously and had begun teaching English all around the world.
Sam: I remember working on my father’s farm, cutting asparagus, as you know as 11 and really feeling is this my life? Looking around and seeing this really rural, agricultural area and just feeling completely like a fish out of water and wondering if I was really meant to be there. I really felt like I was meant to be somewhere else.
Helen (voiceover): One of the many things we bonded over was that sense of not quite belonging to the place we were born and feeling ourselves to be on a search for the place that we would land in and that would instantly feel just like home.
Sam: I remember being in the fourth and the fifth grade and being obsessed with this little fantasy of me being a transfer student from England of all places. I used to practice this English accent which I had gotten from all these old movies that my mom had showed us. I imagined myself dressed different, but I was always alone and kind of a loner in those fantasies. Me walking around the playground of the school, being at school and have people interact with me sometimes but not being with them. I was different but there was a reason for me to be different. There was a certain element of being cool or interesting associated with that otherness. It was a positive thing. It was a thing that people were curious about and interested in. That was just a fantasy that got me through things. I was the person that watched old movies and saw people: you know theatre and dancing and opera and longed for the big city.
Helen (voiceover): I think it’s really interesting to hear Sam talk about how films, books, and theatre were a source of comfort to him when he was younger. And perhaps fuelled the feeling he had, not only that he was meant to be somewhere else, but that going out there to find his places was a fantasy that could become a reality in his life. I’m struck by this idea of fantasy, the stories or ideas that we tell ourselves about who we could be and where we might belong. It makes me wonder about my own search for a place that feels like home to me and how much that is fuelled by fantasy, by ideas that I have from books I’ve read or films I’ve watched. I always find Sam’s experience inspiring though. As despite having lived in nine countries since he left the US in 2003, he found a particularly special connection with one place: Berlin
Sam: I went there in 2003 and it was a very different place. It wasn’t a mecca for bohemian wannabees from around the world. Not to say that that’s a negative thing but it just wasn’t that. It did have a feeling of being immersed in a local culture. Berlin had a feeling of being very dishevelled and with a lot of really exciting things to do at night. There were people from various places around, but they were kind of like cast offs. They were kind of like dysfunctional cast offs. There was all the other stuff: there was the history, there was the fact that there was old architecture mixed in with new architecture, there was the sense of wall and the immigrant communities, and the fact that Berlin is a pretty poor place. All of those things gave me the feeling of that it’s exciting. It felt familiar to me. I met a lot of people that I really liked and it kind of all combined.
Helen (voiceover): While Sam acknowledges the many things about Berlin that particularly excited him and made him feel eager to make a new home in the city, I think it’s interesting to hear him talk about how his connection with a book set in Berlin really coloured his experience of it.
Sam: Right at that time is when I read the Christopher Isherwood novel -- the Christopher Isherwood novels, the Berlin novels. It was such a -- they hit me so hard, and I related so much to this character who, even though he’s English and I’m American, he was alone in Berlin observing the culture. He was gay. He was an English teacher. He’s recounting these stories of his teaching experiences and the crazy characters they met. It was just so much of it seemed really something I could relate to that I -- and I started travelling around the city on a bike or walking or going on the U-Bahn and I would find locations that he would -- that he talked about in his book. And that radically transformed my relationship to the city, but it also gave me the sense of history in the city and that there was a connection there for me that I could relate to.
Helen (voiceover): I’m sure many of us can relate to the experience of identifying with a character in a book or a film, and maybe even following in their footsteps to a place. Again, this seems to fit with the idea of our sense of home and what home can mean to us, being something of a fantasy. Seeing a place through the prism of art and literature, that moves us, adds a romance to our relationship with it. One of the most iconic lines from the Christopher Isherwood novels Sam references is the opening to Goodbye to Berlin:
I am a camera with its shutter open, quiet, passive, recording, not thinking. Recording the man shaving at the window opposite and the woman in the kimono washing her hair.
There’s a sense of the character on the periphery as he observes the lives of others around him. Having lived in Berlin for so long now, I wondered if Sam’s feeling of being somewhat on the outside looking in had changed at all. He took great effort to learn German and I, particularly as someone who does not speak a second language, was keen to hear how that had changed his experience of the city. Did this see him move from observing on the edge to feeling deeply embedded in the rhythm of Berlin? Did it open up the city, so he now heard it in a whole new way? And did learning the language of the place that so enchanted him when he first arrived make him feel more at home there?
Sam: When I was suddenly in a situation where people would talk and I would just passively understand without trying, the city came alive in that way but what I realised in that moment was it did demystify the city as well. I think that it did reduce a certain amount of romance that I associated with being this foreign person in this exciting city. Suddenly it became a rather mundane city where I realised people were talking about fairly concrete things that were maybe not as interesting as I had imagined.
There’s pros and cons there about that. The other thing is, once you learn the language and you can just fade in with everybody else, you’re no longer special. There’s no people making concessions for you or exceptions for you and I’m not saying that I wanted to be that all the time but I’m saying -- because I remember beforehand when people would change to English, and I didn’t want them to, or I wanted to be more anonymous but there’s -- I guess my point is there’s just pros and cons on both sides.
Helen (voiceover): I appreciate Sam’s honesty about the upsides and the downsides of learning a language and that in some ways it broke the illusion, the mystique that Berlin carried for him. I guess as a place becomes more familiar, it may be harder to hold it up as a fantasy and there are good and bad things about that. With familiarity comes comfort and ease but the buzz of the new and mysterious fades. Sam’s experience also interests me as now having lived in Berlin for a total of nine years, he has a real sense of personal history with the place. He’s gone through significant life changes there and he’s shared with me how sometimes he can even feel haunted by past versions of himself occupying the city streets.
Sam: Sometimes I have the feeling when I walk around the city now, I feel a bit like a ghost because I’m seeing places that I lived that other life in. I mean the actual same streets and buildings and I have these memories flood back over me but the life that I actually live now is much different and, in many ways, much more removed. My relationship to Berlin has changed in the last three or four years because I started to feel like the reason that I’m here no longer applies. I’m starting to feel like it’s time for me to move on but I’m so safe in this place that I’m afraid. Afraid to go back out there and not sure what to do. There is a sense of -- there is a sense of being a ghost in that way as well.
Helen (voiceover): “The reason I’m here no longer applies” Sam tells us. The story or the connection to a place that was at one time so strong doesn’t necessarily fit now. It makes me reconsider the idea I had when I was younger that you would find your place and that would be it. Perhaps a sense of home and belonging is more fluid than that and while one place might feel like where we need to be in one point in our life, that can change. Interestingly, Sam has spoken to me about how for the first time he was considering a return to his hometown in America. That from a distance he’s been reassessing his relationship with the place.
Sam: There has been a process, maybe only in the last five years, of me starting to think more fondly of the place and starting to feel like maybe I will end up there, maybe I’ll return. So a bit more nostalgia and a sense of reinterpreting my experience as a child and a teenager. What would it be like after 25 years or 30 years to actually return and start a life for myself in a rural valley agricultural area? Depressed kind of area. I have started to think about that more.
Helen (voiceover): As I stand on the shores of the seafront that I had been so eager to leave behind when I was younger, I’m now able to appreciate the place in a way I never could have before leaving. An appreciation that was perhaps only able to arise after having spent 15 years living away. Will I ever think of this place as home? Could I ever move back here? How might that feel? And there I see myself falling into another fantasy, another compelling story, that of the wanderer returning.
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Sadie (to Helen): Had you done anything like this before? What made you want to try out podcasting?
Helen: No, I hadn’t done anything like this before. I think primarily what made me want to do it is that I’d just been listening to so many podcasts. I’d perhaps been always slightly resistant to them for some reason because I listen to a lot of the radio. Anyway, either way they became a massive source of comfort and such a huge part of my life over 2020. I could see how maybe some of the skills that I’ve developed as a playwright or a writer and even a researcher, like my current PhD research, could be applicable but in terms of the technical aspect I felt like a complete beginner, and I would have no idea where to begin.
Sadie: Why did you choose this particular story to tell? What drew you to this story?
Helen: Well, I instantly thought of my friend Sam, and I was thinking about this idea of home which is -- seems to be something that comes up quite a lot for me in writing and work. I’m always really interested in people have a place that they feel particularly is their home, even if they don’t live there but they can kind of straight away say oh you know well home is always Glasgow or I felt straight away at home in London. Because I don’t have that as a place particularly. I just always intrigued and want to hear from people that do and understand their relationship with it. Is it because that’s where you were born and you just you always know that that feels home, or did you just discover this place and put that? And what was it about that you -- was there something about your identity that seemed to match the identity of the place? Does language play a part in that, I guess? Like learning, acquiring a language. Have you had to travel to find that place or is it just where you were?
I think Sam is a really interesting person because he’s lived in nine countries, very different countries, across the world and I guess therefore is good at or experienced in making temporary homes for himself. He has a complex relationship with where he grew up and yet seems -- he writes, he’s writing a memoir and seems to be forever writing about that place, even though he doesn’t want to be there. But also, he landed upon Berlin and had the romantic -- or have always imagined as being romantic connection with a place where you land in that city or place in the world, and this is my place. I’ve found it. I think when he first moved to Berlin it was certainly that. He learnt German, so I was interested in learning a bit more about whether that deepened that connection or not or just how that changed his relationship with the place.
I think he’s quite an engaging storyteller as well. So part of me felt that he would be a good subject in that he -- he has a good turn of phrase, and he uses a lot of images when he talks. Which actually is not something I was really conscious of at the beginning of this but you -- I think you mentioned that in one of our meetings about -- yeah, it was when we edited the interview between you and your mum, and you were talking about some of the choices I’d made. I think subconsciously I’d selected bits where she -- there was some really amazing imagery. I can still remember when she was describing a friend of her grandmothers as a magnificent crow, and I just loved that and that’s still in my head now. I think Sam has that quality as well of perhaps landing on powerful images that stay with you. In that way a good subject for a podcast.
Sadie: The idea of choosing a home is really interesting to me because I’ve always definitely thought of home as something that is the default of where you are raised. Perhaps if you move between places, you might be able to at some point say okay, this place feels more like home than that place. But the idea of travelling in search of a home is really interesting to me. I liked hearing about that from Sam. I thought that was really interesting.
What was it like telling someone else’s story rather than your own? I’m interested in this -- so I’m making a episode with my mum. So similarly, I’m telling her story for her -- with her input and collaboratively but I’m very aware that it’s collaborative but I’m still the one doing the editing and making the decisions about how the story’s told. I wondered how that felt for you? Like the dynamics of telling someone else’s story with them but also for them.
Helen: Yeah, really interesting. I think there was quite a big shift between my first edit and my second edit because in the first edit I was very much wanting to I guess platform as much of Sam’s story as possible. Even though I was having to edit down a lot of interview content, I was really wanting to make sure that I gave a real flavour of the whole breadth of what he told me. And really being conscious in my edits of not -- which I guess we all be but not -- an edit hadn’t changed the meaning or how things had -- I mean I guess kind of ethics around that as well. I think after having our feedback and discussing it, I think that my -- maybe my concerns to keep as much of what he told me as possible and to try and get in as many elements of his personality or shades there was to the detriment of having a more focused piece of storytelling.
So the second edit: there’s whole chunks about Sam and who he is that don’t get mentioned at all. I have actually brought myself in a little bit more, reflecting on what he says and relating it back to myself and also, hopefully opening it up to the audience as well. I think maybe I probably needed to go on that journey of having the first edit to then feel being able to do it in the second edit. It is really interesting because I don’t think I’ve ever written verbatim theatre but I’ve definitely -- I’ve taught undergraduates about verbatim theatre. I suppose there’s a slight crossover in some of the things you think about. That when you’re using someone’s direct words and anything that’s pertaining to be documentary or verbatim, of course you still need to acknowledge that it’s been edited and that the director or the playwright or whoever is always going to be shaping something to their -- to serve the ideas they want. I think I was conscious of that.
Especially because, I mean I would be with anyone, but when it’s a really good friend. I suppose there’s pros and cons to that as well because perhaps if you’re interviewing someone you’ve never met before you are just going on what they’ve told you in that interview. Even then you still have a lot to shape and cut down. I suppose in addition to everything Sam told me in that interview, I was also bringing over 10 years of friendship and all the other stuff that I know about him which would be colouring then what I -- how I want to edit it and what I want to tell.
Sadie: I think it’s going to be somewhat similar making the episode with my mum because [laughs] there’s a lot of -- yeah, there’s all of our relationship and all that I know of her crammed into [laughs] this little, short piece.
Because you were quite close to Sam already before making this, I wondered if -- did you learn anything new about Sam or his experiences that you didn’t already know?
Helen: I think I didn’t realise quite how -- I didn’t include this in my first edit, but I’ve included it in the second one, that he felt that learning German demystified the city for him in a way. So a certain amount of the romance that he had or the vision he created of Berlin was slightly lost when he learnt German, which I found really interesting. I don’t speak another language so I probably slightly -- I’m in awe of that and romanticise what it must be to access another language of somewhere you’re really connected to.
I think he talked -- I knew -- I knew that he didn’t feel at home where he grew up, but it was interesting -- he expressed it very eloquently and there was a lot of what I could relate to in how he described it but also there were just particular details that I hadn’t heard before. One of which being that he -- he had this sort of fantasy of himself as a transfer student from England. I think because he felt like a bit of a fish out of water, and he grew up watching a lot of old films that his mum had shown him and that inspired him to have this fantasy that he wasn’t actually from there. I just enjoyed that anecdote which very much makes sense in keeping with the Sam I know but I hadn’t heard that particular detail before.
Sadie: Did you go in to making the episode with quite a clear idea of what it was going to be like or did Sam’s answers throw up surprises and almost throw you off course a little bit in a way?
Helen: Yes. Yeah, I suppose I just realised that you can’t ever project what you want your interviewee to say. There were questions I asked having an idea of where he was going to go. Again, coming back to the language thing and he -- the fact that it demystified. He was also like “I also managed really well when I didn’t speak the language and that wasn’t actually that hard not speaking the language then.” Even though he acknowledged that it was something really important to him, he worked really hard at it, he wasn’t giving me that story of that “I set my mind to learning the language and it was so important to me and I did, and it changed everything.” He was like “well, it wasn’t actually that hard when I did learn it. Then when I did learn it, it wasn’t this amazing thing necessarily.”
I knew this a little bit, but I suppose the fact that he’d found the city Berlin that he connected with, and he’s lived for a really long time but -- he’s not fallen out of love with it but his relationship with it has dramatically changed and he’s feeling ready to move on again. So I guess in terms of thinking about home and finding your home it again challenges that maybe romanticised notion that I had of finding your place.
Sadie: I’ve definitely found myself before in interviews having a story in mind going in, maybe having already planned the episode, and then going into an interview and someone says something that completely throws off what I was expecting and I’m like oh no. [laughs] And almost being tempted to be like I’ll just ignore that. I’ve definitely been challenging myself to not ignore the bits that surprise me and to even embrace the bits that I don’t immediately understand or that even that appear to contradict other things the person’s said. I think at first that was a real challenge for me when I started interviewing: of not going in with too firm an idea of what I expected or maybe going in with an idea -- because I do plan the interviews beforehand. So you have to have some idea of what you want to talk about but being willing to be surprised is quite important.
Helen: Definitely. Yeah, and I guess as well accepting that people might say quite contradictory things even in the course of one interview --
Sadie: -- And both can be true.
Helen: -- Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, because I think that definitely happened where we had a series of conversations over a week and even he acknowledged -- I wasn’t even that conscious of it but after one he was like I think I was a bit more low energy that day. I suppose listening back you could sort of hear perhaps feeling a bit more buoyant and optimistic on one day and that’s obviously going to then colour how you talk about things.
Sadie: Mm. You’re never going to get the whole of the person in one interview sitting.
Helen: Totally, yeah.
Sadie: Do you think you learned anything about yourself in the process of making the episode? Your own ideas about home or…?
Helen: Yeah, I think it’s amazing how fluid things can be and the fact that we are able to move around but I find it interesting the different factors for different people that take you to different places. I think I’d always had this sense that where you choose to maybe make you home says something a bit about you. Like if you Glasgow that a bit of what Glasgow’s identity is must appeal to you in some way. Or Manchester. Or Cornwall, wherever you choose. So I don’t know.
I think for me it’s always meant then that the relatively high stakes on where I am going to be next, and where do I choose to base myself and I don’t know. Perhaps letting go of that a bit and I don’t know. I think we talked a bit as well in one of the feedback sessions about the idea of home being an internal thing as well as an external thing. Which I think is also interesting to acknowledge because what came out in the interview with Sam, and I think I recognise as well, is cities do change but it’s what’s going on with you inside that is also then informing how you are relating to a place as home or not.
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Sadie (voiceover): Thanks to Helen for making this episode with us and for lending us her skill and her thoughtfulness. Thanks as always to the Accentricity team: John McDiarmid and Martha Ryan, to Seb Philp for the music, and to Aileen Marshall for the transcription. Remember to follow the links in the episode description to buy a t-shirt, become a member on Patreon or Steady, or to make a one-off donation. Thanks for listening.