Being absorbed by travel and the challenge of distilling our discoveries: Sam Anderson on the 'Dear Adam Silver' podcast

'Boomtown' by Sam Anderson

Abigail Smithson is an artist with a love for basketball. Like myself, she has a perspective of the game through art and the larger world. Her guests are a reflection of this. Author Sam Anderson provided amazing insight into the writing of his book, 'Boomtown: The fantastical saga of Oklahoma City, its chaotic founding... its purloined basketball team, and the dream of becoming a world-class metropolis'. How OKC came to be his muse and the invigoration he got through travel.

'Dear Adam Silver' podcast | Episode 37: Sam Anderson and Boom Town

SAM ANDERSON: (31m 06s) There's something to be said for coming in as an outsider, as a blank slate and then just filling in the canvas as much as you can.
ABIGAIL SMITHSON: And I think if you're from somewhere, whether it's where you grew up or you live later on. Whichever. It's so much harder to get that same level of drive towards learning about that place, you take it for granted... whereas when you're in a new place and you're a visitor, I gotta get all this info...

I visited Oklahoma in 2017. I was able to spend time with distant cousins, my only NBA roadtrip being hosted by family. I'm sure my experience of Oklahoma was unique to me. Our experience of places are inevitably shaped by the time we have, who we meet along the way and the perspectives we bring. Like any good dialogue, hopefully we get taken somewhere that we didn't expect coming in.

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A post shared by Loz In Transit (@30homegames) on Jun 21, 2020 at 4:52am PDT

On being activated by novelty, Sam Anderson continues:

ANDERSON: It was like an alternate mode of being. That to me as a writer, a reporter, a whatever–as a human is like the most exciting thing, is just being in a place with all my receptors wide open and just take in everything I can take in and that's my only job is to be fully aware. It feels like a real Buddhist state of ecstasy and openness. The writing is the horrible part, the production of the thing later is the bad part. Being out there absorbing the world is just one of the happiest feelings I know...

I've grappled with this myself. On my first grand adventure backpacking around Europe, I traveled sans camera for most of the trip to fully embrace the moment. Truth be told, my camera was stolen early on but I resolved not to replace it to fully commit to the experience. I became fascinated by memory. I read books about it, and wrestled with it through writing. Especially with the ubiquity of social media and life documentation, it often becomes a battle between living in the moment or standing back to capture it.

Sam and Abigail share their struggles with this conflict as creatives:

ABIGAIL SMITHSON: (33m 12s) It's so nice for me to hear that the writing is still the horrible part for you. I too get very exhilarated by being somewhere that's new to me... realising that this could be something I spend more time with but then now I'm home and "aaaargh", slowly pecking at the keys. It's not great. 

SAM ANDERSON: The worst. The worst... I come back and it's always the same thing. I'm overwhelmed by this continent of thrilling material I've come back with and how do you go about reducing that and mapping it out and just extracting the littlest bits that tell people about the larger thing. You just lose so much and that always feels so traumatic for me. That transition from the pure ecstasy of intaking the world to the difficulty of outputting some tiny little thing represents that intake. It's always so hard and it surprises me every time how hard it is and how different the thing I produce is to what I imagined or felt along the way.

Borrowing a moment from #30HGnorthwest

Sam Anderson resolves the dilemma of disconnect by finding value in the attempt.

SAM ANDERSON: (35m 21s) As my editors always reminded me, my big sloshing Pacific Ocean of ecstatic experiences on any given subject, that's completely internal to me. It does that subject no justice if I just sit around with it sloshing around inside myself feeling happy that I contain this ocean and that I have to find a way to distil and compress... present this tiny sculpture made of salt... Here you go. That's the ocean.

'Before Sunrise' (1995) - "The answer must be in the attempt"

A worthy resolution, validated in a line from my favourite movie 'Before Sunrise'. "If there's any kind of magic in this world it must be in the attempt of understanding someone sharing, something. I know, it's almost impossible to succeed... but who cares really? The answer must be in the attempt."


Find other posts on creativity and memory here:
- Jacques Henri Lartigue: Why I'm getting a camera
- The pursuit of happiness: A collection of "Happy triggers" during travel
- Retiring the @30HomeGames Instagram.
- Other people's stories - Tales of: Living in the moment