Don't you think it's kind of ironic that Kurt Cobain got cooler than he had ever been before after he killed himself?
Whatever, that's not the point of what I want to write. The point of this is to get my ego in check and remind myself that I'm a loser so I can get myself grounded, do some writing, finish up this last song, and put this whole thing to bed. I don't even know what I want to say but I feel like I need to write in a bad way. Maybe something decent will come out.
This line has been stuck in my head since last night. My family is all in town for Christmas and I went and met my cousin and her husband out for a beer. When I got there they were hanging out with some of their friends and as soon as I showed up faces lit up, "Hey guys this is my cousin Ted I was telling you about!" I was the life of the party before I even opened my mouth. I guess they were talking about how I'm in a band and how my band has toured around North America and been to Europe so that must mean we're a pretty big deal. Then someone called me cool. And I felt dirty. I assured them that I am not cool. That being in a hardcore band isn't glamorous and going to Europe really sounds like a much bigger deal than it is. That was taken as me being modest and playing off our musical success as no big deal. I let it go and continued to be a decently cool guy for the rest of the night until a couple of my more attractive female friends showed up. My cousin's husband was stoked and exclaimed, "Are you groupies?!" They got pissed because that's obviously pretty insulting but I'll be honest, I thought it was pretty funny. The fact of the matter is that if I wasn't in this band those girls wouldn't even know who I am or give two shits about who I am or what I'm about. I let it go, talked to them for a few and eventually I left with them to go to a party, probably leaving my family to believe that I was taking off to have some sort of wild rock and roll sex with these two women.
That little incident has been sticking with me. The whole being called cool thing is weird. I'm not going to sit here and bullshit myself. Of course I want to be cool. Of course I want people to light up when I walk into a room. Of course I want to be the life of the party. I'm a narcissist. I want people giving me positive attention at all times. And if I can't have positive attention then negative attention works until I can get some. But it just .... It feels like cheating. I know deep down that I am not cool. I am actually really weird. I've been a dork for as long as I can remember. That doesn't change just because I got a few tattoos and started traveling around with my buddies and screaming at people in basements. I'm still the same person I always was. See, I'm never going to be cool without some costume on.
Every once in a while that bums me out. For a long time it was all I could think about. I was always trying to figure out how I could be cool so I could get those girls that I wanted. I was very concerned about sending out the right image to the general public so I could be interesting and intriguing. And you know that kind of thinking still pops into my head more than I want it to. What I really want though is the courage to be the dork who has never and will never fit in out on the street. Being a dork keeps me honest. If I'm doing something that other people think is uncool then at least I know that I'm doing what I'm doing for me. If I have something that I'm willing to do even though other people tell me it's stupid at least I know that what I'm doing is worth struggling for. If I'm doing something that people find cool it takes away that purity. I'm forced to ask myself, "Am I doing this because I know it's what I need to do or because I'm falling into doing what gets the smiles and the claps from the people around me?"
The other problem is doing things that are uncool just for the sake of being uncool. It's like this paradoxical thing where you get cool by being uncool. Kurt Cobain was the coolest guy on the planet for a minute because he would wear ugly flannel shirts and get stupid haircuts and play shitty grunge music. To this day I feel the torment he must have gone through. That guy was legitimately trying to get away from this social status bullshit and just find freedom and purity. I really believe that. But then there's yokels that see this and say, "Hey, if I'm anti-society then people will think I'm a badass." And they put on their black clothes and they do their little dance and masquerade around trying to engineer the reactions and responses they are looking for.
Everybody does it. You do it. I do it. I guess it's a part of being a human being. We're a social animal and on a larger scale we really are one organism. All of the people on the planet are one thing. I guess it's hard to escape the push and pull of the greater consciousness and some days I wonder if I'm not just wasting my time trying to step away from that whole nonsense and find out what I am on my own. But the thing is, even if I am a dork and even if I don't fit in I really feel like I've got something good inside of me. I want to embrace whatever that good thing is instead of trying to push it aside so I can be what I'm expected to be. I want to do what I'm doing because it's what I do. Not because I like being cool. Not because I'm trying to be anti-mainstream. Not because I have some image to fulfill or some reaction I'm trying to get. I want to be shitty old Edwin B. Winkworth III and proud of it instead of playing into this fictional character called Ted AB that was hatched up on some message board and built out of rumors and stereotypes.
The fortune cookie for today is another quote from Kurt and it's one that's really been ringing loudly in my head today: "I'd rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I am not."
Today I understand what that means.
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3 comments:
"The ILLUSION of You or Me destroys or smokescreens what we ARE" - EBW III in Fargo.
I can't help but relate to this entry so much. Maybe I'll talk to you about it at length one day but I definitely go through the same thing and feelings. I will say briefly that being involved in the "behind the scenes" of our supposed subculture of misfits makes us seem automatically cool in a way to certain people that would probably let people such as ourselves just slip through the cracks and go unnoticed otherwise. You're in a band; myself, I book shows, do a radio show, have done zines and the like. But even when I never did any of that stuff and just went to shows all the time, people still saw me as a "cool" person because I went to a ton of shows and hung out with dudes/girls who happened to be in bands. When equally I'm just some dork who just went to shows because I was bored all the time and have no real interests outside of music.
I'm convinced that punk and hardcore is just filled with a bunch of dorks anyway.
I had a bigger reply to this written up but it's kind of unnecessary, so instead I'll just end by saying this post reminds me of a quote from the movie Almost Famous. I'll share it if you haven't seen it:
"The only true currency in this bankrupt world if what we share with someone else when we're uncool."
Thankyou for writing this, and hope you had a very Merry Christmas. I'm sure you were sat doubting the validity of it all and complaining how it's actually a pagan festival and has nothing to do with the contrived notions christianity has put on it as much as I was. Or, maybe not haha.
Society is a bastard, the more you try to be uncool, the more you physically ostracize yourself from it the more it is determined to come after you and pull you back and lay all the more guilt on you about how you never should have left it in the first place.
Resistance is futile it seems.
But you are lucky to see it from that perspective, atleast it gives you the opportunity to get yourself out of it and so better yourself. Because each and every day we all sink a little further towards completely forgetting what makes us human when tv's latest brilliant idea is putting 12 or so fuck-knuckles in a house and filming them for a few months.
contrived, but true.
x
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