Naked in Dangerous Places - Cash Peters [105]
Barrow High is also “The Home of the Whalers,” according to a sign outside, though what the Whalers might be in this context I have no idea. And, oddly, no desire to find out.
In the lobby, I find a man waiting for me. Small, extremely cheerful, and clearly of Inupiat descent, bundled up in a thick woolen coat and hat. Spotting me, he steps up to shake my hand. “Welcome to Barrow,” he says. “I'm Morgan.”
“Yes, I know,” I'm tempted to reply.
Because I'd recognize our gopher anywhere.
Of Barrow's population of 4,500, 65 percent are Native Inupiat Eskimo and descendants of the original settlers, a heritage they take very seriously indeed.
As Morgan leads me on a tour of the school, a group of colorful local musicians decked out in full traditional Inupiat gear just happens at that moment (wink wink) to be rehearsing in the gymnasium, hammering out a thunderous primal beat on large, flat tambourine-like drums to an accompaniment of plaintive howling cries.
“Yaaaaaaay-eeeeaaaa-aaaaay. HUH! Awww-eeee-aaaaaa-eeeee-awwwwww.”
Meanwhile, a young man bedecked in feathers and jingle bells cavorts around like a wounded pelican, performing what they call the Welcome Dance, a vivacious display of shuddering spirals intermixed with spinning and kicking and the stomping of feet.
“Awww. HUH! Eeee-aaaaaaa-eeeee. HUH! Awwwww!”
As far as I can see, this is all it takes to make the perfect evening around here. Sing 'til you're hoarse, dance 'til you're pooped, then go home happy. I find it all quite captivating, and, if I'm honest, I'm left a wee bit jealous. Me, I could never settle for something this uncomplicated. My own needs are so much greater. I need external stimulation at all times. I need facilities, crowds, things going on. In short, I need Hollywood.
It's probably the wrong time to be thinking this, given that I'm supposed to be focused on making a TV show, but watching the Inupiat locals happily engaged in … well, whatever this is, finding boundless pleasure and joy in traditional family and social activities, it suddenly hits me—out of nowhere, bam! Just like that—how dreadfully homesick I am. And how wildly divorced I've become from the norms of everyday living, too. And, perhaps worst of all, how detached I'm starting to feel from all those people I meet on a daily basis who don't have their own travel shows. Which is basically everybody.
By the time this is over, this series, this gaping hole I've dug for myself, I'll have lived in the television cocoon for over twelve months. That's twelve months I can never get back. Twelve months of giant bugs, sunburn, thirteen-hour flights, punishing schedules, food I shouldn't eat, and cultures that, as strange and captivating as they might be, I could happily have lived without seeing. Of relentless, round-the-clock, all-consuming immersion in a single pursuit—making television; stuck on the road, or in planes, or in hotels, or in edit bays, or voiceover studios recording narration; forcing myself by means of chocolate-covered coffee beans to stay up 'til all hours of the night writing scripts to a deadline; having my bags searched at countless security checkpoints (especially my little red-and-blue backpack, which every trained sniffer dog from Tokyo to Guadalajara is convinced contains explosives); checking in to unfamiliar hotels that don't seem to want me there; arriving home in Los Angeles after my partner's gone to sleep, then getting up again before he's awake to find a limo already sitting outside in the darkened street, engine murmuring, the driver propped up against the hood, yawning between puffs on his first cigarette of the morning, waiting to take me to the airport all over again