Low (Addendum)

We once said that "Low was where we came from." And that may have been a little fictiony (the best sort of fiction, big-hearted and delusional). PMC reminded me on Sunday that I may love and understand "Low Countries," but I was never a naturalized citizen of them so much as a charmed exchange student (an ethnographer maybe?). You see, this A&P post of several weeks ago was quoted on a blog called Smart City Memphis, an iteration of the public radio program about urban development(s). I, little old soupy me, was brought (sort of unawares) into a serious discourse on the present and future state of Bluff City. This brought on the first negative comment from a (seeming) first non-friend/family reader of A&P, a certain "Anonymous"--

They don't make music like that here anymore and haven't for a long time. It's easy to post positive when yo don't live in it and were privileged when you lived here. right now, you can fly a plane over Memphis and see that MOST of it is very run down, go to all those neighborhoods and ask those people how they like living here.
It's an atro-city.
It's a great big whitewash that never gets any better, it only gets worse and bigger.

There is a difference from cynicism and ultimate reality, look it up.

At once, I was struck with a foolish panic--"Does 'Anonymous' know who I am?!" Of course not. You don't have to know me personally to read my position of "privilege." It's inherent in my writing. Yet more interesting, it's proposed as inherent in my love of Memphis, a place that may well be lovable only to those who have had certain benefits. I feel that my affection for "Low" is genuine, but I must concede, however I may wish it otherwise in a given moment (evidenced by my taste in television shows or boyfriends), it is not really where I come from. I stand by the fact that the extreme "High" and "Low" architectural and social elements in Memphis, always, ever side-by-side, have gone a ways in shaping each of our eyes and minds. But that game of aesthetics is quintessentially, born-with-luckily "High."

Last notes on "High and Low"—
We (really I) have been wrangling with readings of our tagline since the inception of the blog; and, in the process, I've ignored a few nuances, mostly by not doing what I am best at, listing. For the record, "High and Low" references:
searching and editing
hunting
(a-ha)
arts and culture
collage?
pot
liquor
mood disorders
topography
volume
fat content
castes
tastes
pressure systems
channels
shelves
temperatures