“I was an outsider before I was a traveler; I was a traveler before I was a writer; I think one led to the other.”
Watching the World Cup in Düsseldorf
The vuvuzelas are not just a collective drone in a literal sense or an audio sense. As phenomena, they become a metaphor underlying my whole trip. Everything else I experience while traveling in Düsseldorf—the sites, the history, the people, and the way in which childhood memories come spiraling back to the current moment—begins to feel like a grand set of resonances harmonizing the vuvuzelas.