I look forward to these tender boat rides from ship to shore. The idea of being ferried to a new and unfamiliar place is one wrought with nervous anticipation and epic possibility. This boat is small, its path tractable as we skip across choppy water to the windmills in the distance.
By we, I mean my skipper and me; we’re the only ones on this motorized wedge of a vessel and as soon as we port and I step off, I’m alone.
This is my first real interview wherein I’m the one asking the questions. My subject—or interviewee or candidate or whatever you call the person in the proverbial spotlight—is a bit of a mystery to me. Given, there’s a sort of worry in the air about whether this trip to Mykonos, Greece will pay dividends content-wise…
Well. We’re in Mykonos, Greece for god’s sake.
Worry turns to sea salt in my hair. Scanning the dock as I check my left, right and rear pockets to make sure I didn’t leave anything on the tender boat (a traveler’s habit I’ve formed after once losing my mobile device to the backseat of a taxi cab in Las Vegas), I see a thin man with his arm hoisted in the air like one of those orange aviation windsocks. That’s him. Now we check off formalities: handshake, how was the ferry ride, mentions of lunch, motions gone through.
"First time in Greece?” he asks from behind his violet-lens’d aviator sunglasses. “Yup, Europe in general. I was just in Istanbul yesterday,” I told him. “You must’ve stopped by the Grand Bazaar then. When I was there, it was an emotional afternoon…” As he said this, I brought out my audio recorder and held it up between us like a tangible awkward question. He nods in approval. “I mean, I’ve been a foreigner before so I’m not necessarily unacquainted with the usual culture-shocked staredown effect, but—”
He pauses. “You like pizza? There’s a hole-in-the-wall just a block from here... Don’t get the margherita, though—it’s basically a square slice of pepperoni that’s missing the main ingredient.” We criss-cross through the town’s narrow alleyways, white walls with splashes of blue window shutter, postcard Mediterranea in all its picturesque allure. My subject evades me for a quick iPhone snapshot of the shoreline’s five iconic windmills. His initial attempt is thwarted by their expansiveness and he is forced to take a few steps back in order to fit every windmill into the photo’s frame.
I snap a shot myself.
“I’d love to hear the rest of your Istanbul story.” His small eyes dart up at me from beyond the rim of his frosted beer mug. We’re deeper into town now, our stomachs happily satisfied and our perspiry brows gleaming for ice cold beverages of the fermented nature. The pub we found ourselves in is like no bar I’ve ever been to. Sunlight illuminates every centimeter of an immaculately clean room, which is no bigger than a Los Angeles liquor store (albeit noticeably less dingy). An ocean breeze bounces off white paint and open doors. The place is empty.
“The Bazaar is marvelous in its chaos,” he continues, gulping down a third of his glass of Mythos. You’re in there and it’s an epic orgy of underdeveloped mercantile consumerism at its rawest state… There’s this unsettling feeling that you’re impossibly lost, yet the entire place works like a flawless network of airplane traffic at a busy airport. It requires you and then it ushers you out—as effortlessly as it consumed you in the first place. It’s remarkable.”
What is remarkable is this young man’s nostalgic bearing, the kind that overlaps itself with a teasingly poignant sensibility. It’s as if he’s bravely self-aware, almost to a fault. I can’t tell if he’s coming up with all of this himself or if he read it in some indie graphic novel, though it matters not. As he tells me about the shopkeeper who angrily chased him and his family away because they were “just browsing,” and about the sales showcase which took place in the basement of a gallery involving hospitable cups of Turkish cider and lots and LOTS of unfurled throw rugs, I find myself arriving at the interview’s turning point.
This is when I realize that great stories are being passed unto me.
My storyteller is perfectly inexperienced, teetering backwards across the tightrope while focusing intently on every single step. They say you musn’t look down, but the view must be great from his point of view, far above the tilt-shifted minutae of daily routine. There exists a sweet spot in every man’s life during which new experiences happen consecutively and with uncontrollable velocity.
This is the swivel atop which he sits. Every direction presents uncharted territory, himself an adventurer on the verge of discovery, a discoverer on the cusp of adventure. As we part in separate directions through the slim Grecian passageway outside the tap house, I spin around to extend a final request:
“Write it all down! Everything—every single unceremonious moment...”
He smiles back at me, and somehow I get the feeling that he’s already started.
