Lina Abascal at the LARB:
THERE ARE SOME things the American mind can’t fully grasp: a certain way of smoking a cigarette, a particular fit of track pant, Rita Ora as a genuine celebrity. But above all, we struggle with the reality that the largest cultural event in the world happens entirely off of our radar and outside of our influence. The Eurovision Song Contest’s essence is European in ways that can only be defined by the same parameters our Supreme Court once used for pornography: you know it when you see it.
At the bar of a chain restaurant inside Los Angeles International Airport, I overhear a bored bartender run the same jokes. A diner wants chopsticks. “Are you right- or left-handed?” Someone says “hi” after sitting on an empty stool. “Not yet, but I will be after this.” By the end of my bowl of sticky chicken, it’s my turn to repeat the lines I’ve been practicing for a month.
“I’m flying to Copenhagen to write about something called the Eurovision Song Contest,” I tell him.
more here.
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