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[17 Oct 2002|06:02pm] |
coming home, i was looking forward to the fact that the apartment would be mine for six or seven hours. rob has work tonight starting at five, which is about what time i always get home. i felt like i had a lot of shit to write about on this here journal--things that i think about a lot but don't always write about, things that have been going on in my life lately that have made me think about deeper issues. shit i just wanted to get off my chest. but of course, coming home after riding 10 miles, i find myself getting lethargic, sitting in front of the computer heavy-lidded and being short and terse in i.m. conversations as i try to just get through checking my email. i was planning on going and taking a nap, putting off exploring my journal ideas as i often do... which usually is the first step to them not ever getting written down at all. but then, for some reason, i chose to put atmosphere on the mp3 player for background music. atmosphere is a hip hop group, which makes it all the more odd that they have such an emotional affect on me when i listen to them. let's face it, most hip hop is about violence, sex, and the bling bling. not atmosphere though. atmosphere is the perfect music for a day like today--dreary but not raining, just cold enough to chill me through my short sleeve shirt as i rode home. it's pensive music for pensive weather. so i guess i decided that even though i could use a nap, i'd go ahead and see how i could do, trying to express my feelings and thoughts when i'm a quarter of the way to being asleep.
last night i tried out for an open vocalist spot in a tool-style nu metal band. i don't know if they would want me or not, but i have decided upon reflection that i'm not interested in doing it. see, these kids were mostly nice, but the lead guitarist definitely wasn't. he was the type of guy who thinks he's the ringleader and everyone else in the band is his sideman. it didn't seem like anyone else had any room to express themselves. i've been in bands where i felt like that, and i know that i would butt heads with someone like that immediately. i'd like to say that i had fun singing for them last night, at least, but that definitely is not true. it felt like a job, like something i HAD to do, not something i wanted to do, the second i got there. part of it was that one kid--i figured out what he was like from the first two things he said to me and took an immediate dislike to him. but really, a lot of it was just that i felt so out of place with the kids i was hanging out with. the second guitarist (who's the member i'd talked to before going to check out the band, and who seemed the coolest of all the kids in it), the bassist, and the drummer were all really nice people and i felt ok about hanging out with and talking to them. but then again, they were obviously not like me. these were younger kids, who'd grown up with nu metal bands like korn and their even more horrifying descendents being a natural, unquestioned part of the scene. i find the whole style of music and style of dress and attitude that goes along with all of that stuff completely repugnant. the lyrics to a lot of those bands' songs are just whiny complaining about nothing bullshit--i guess since jonathan davis of korn had a rough childhood and wrote about it a lot, everyone else in the scene felt like they should follow his lyrical lead. i don't know, it's obvious from the way i'm writing that i don't think too much of the whole nu metal thing, but that's not to say that people who like it are wrong, or bad people. it's simply to say that i don't find myself fitting in with their style, their interests, and their value system. they do things with their fashion to shock adults, and that's similar to early punk rock, but then again as i've gotten older i've seen all of that as more and more bankrupt. the point is not how controversial or noncontroversial you are, the point is that the whole nu metal scene seems guilty of the same things that punks can be guilty of at times--doing things with your appearance just to try to shock people, and not because you'd just actually like to look that way for your own reasons. i have long hair, but that's something i do for myself, because i like it. the question shouldn't be a question of how people will react, it should be how you will like it. i don't know, i feel like i'm not quite making my point very well, but the upshot is that these kids--despite the nu metal thing--are pretty normal. they're just like any other 19 or 20 year old. that's not something that is bad, and i didn't dislike the kids... i just didn't feel like they'd understand me. i didn't feel like i had the ability to be real with them. and i can't see playing in a band with anyone i feel that way about.
it's funny, because i've been having conversations a lot recently with a good friend about feeling like you don't fit in with other people--feeling out of place, feeling alien, feeling like you have to be careful or everyone will figure out that you're the only one that's different, that doesn't fit in. and like, she and i have been relating pretty well about what we've been talking about. we both have had plenty of experiences like that. however, our individual reactions to the situations have been almost completely different. i think maybe when i was younger i would have reacted the same as she does--feeling crappy about myself, thinking that there's something wrong with me that makes it so that i don't fit in with the other kids. however, these days--and it's been that way for at least a few years now, though it's hard to say when or why the change came in the first place--i tend to react to such situations by thinking that the things i value, and the things i think, that set me apart from the crowd around me, are good things. it's not to say i'm better than all the kids who don't think the same as me, but i feel like a lot of times kids like the nu metal guys i was hanging around with last night just never question the dominant paradigms of their subculture. everybody else is braiding their hair and wearing baggy pants, so they do too. no matter what social group you're in, most people are just following the trends. the fact that i question it, and that i come to conclusions based on how i honestly feel about things way more often than i just do what the crowd tells me is cool makes me a lot different than most people. but it's not a bad thing, in fact i usually think it's a good thing. i'm not better than kids who don't question things, who never take the time, thought, and effort to form value systems independently of what they've been taught by parents or teachers or television. but then again, my value system is better than theirs. at least for me. and really, if they'd arrived at theirs through the same methods i did, they'd be way better off, and i wouldn't be as easily able to say that theirs weren't as good as mine. but the problem is that it's generally pretty obvious that they put far less thought into it than me. kneejerk homophobia and unquestioning fandom for every band in the scene. it doesn't make sense.
anyway, i try to explain all this to my friend, and i don't know if i'm making it make sense to her. i also don't know if i've explained it the way i just did to her, ever. either way, it's really the point you have to get to, in life. the point where you realize that the things that might make you not like everyone else are probably the very same things that make your life rewarding. it's our uniqueness that makes us interesting, and makes our lives worth living. sure, not everyone is going to like us. sometimes we meet an entire group of kids that we have to either hide our true natures from or face the fact that they'll hate us. but it's worth it to be a real person. it's worth it to know yourself and to do the things you really want to do and believe the things you really believe deep in your heart. i've always known kids who didn't really seem to have one true face that they showed everyone. kids who acted one way with one group of their friends and another way with another. kids who really just wanted to be liked by everyone, regardless of the amount of self-sacrifice they'd have to make with each friend. people like this are pretty much always revealed to be fake eventually--and no one really likes those people too much anyway. they're always acquaintances instead of friends. it's not worth it to be one of them.
so yeah, i won't be singing for that band. but at least i can take comfort in knowing that i'm real, that i'm the best andrew i can be. there are way worse things.
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