Medium Difficulty

I read Carolyn Ellis’ “Autoethnography…” essay over a week ago, and read Richard Shweder’s “The Surprise of Ethnography” a few days ago. I left both to simmer in my mind, and let my reaction to them come naturally.

On Thursday my band played a show in Santa Barbara, CA, about an hour and a half drive north of where I live. Earlier in the week I called an old friend of mine who lives there and invited him out to the show. His name is Joe.

I’ve known Joe since the first grade. We were best friends through all of grade school, got in a fight once in third grade, and never encountered any other problems in our friendship until high school. We were always very accommodating with one another, as we had to be given our very different backgrounds.

Then in high school he discovered that he had a deep affinity for smoking pot. I discovered that I did not. Eventually his circle of friends changed to reflect his new lifestyle, and mine did to suit my own. When college came, he went to UC Santa Barbara and I went to USC – two decisions that closely mirrored our desire to find a community that might support our lifestyles.

Through most of college I was always sad for him, wished he would find help, etc… Then at the show on Thursday, he showed up, after I hadn’t seen him for over a year, maybe two.

After the show he came up to me and told me he enjoyed it. Then asked me if I wanted to smoke. I declined. He insisted. I resisted. I told him I would buy him a drink and to meet me at the bar. He shyly agreed, with a slight look of irritation on his face.

I waited at the bar, and he never showed up. At that moment, I realized that I had actually offended him by not accepting his offer to smoke. Further, and I confirmed this with a phone call later, I further stepped on his attempts to be hospitable by offering my own hospitality, as if my wanting to get him a drink were sufficient means of greeting, and his offering a smoke, insufficient means.

That is when the full impact of the two essays sank into my brain. My presumptive universal was that, although only some people smoke pot, many more people would have a drink, and thus, having a drink is a better means of being hospitable. In addition, I experienced what I might call a momentary ethnographic experience just by comparing his desires with my own.

I realized that even in a more local context, the concept of presuming a universal is not only inconsiderate, it can lead to all sorts of judgments, such as I called my friend a “weirdo” after he left without saying good-bye.

Further my own experience of the situation, my own personal account gave me probably more insight into the situation than my observation of it. In that way, my autoethnographic account helped me better understand my relationship with a person than my ethnographic account could. Had I just observed the encounter I might come to the conclusion that Joe was being unreasonable. However, I really can’t say now. After all, I was in his town, and he was the one that made the effort to support my music. Perhaps there would have been another way to handle the situation with somewhat less awkward results.

Perhaps had I read the essays a little earlier…