-CBF-
I was working at my old high school last week. My last class of the day was a planning period with a leadership student. We didn’t have anything to do, I couldn’t leave, because I had that one student, and it turned out that she was a guitar player in a thrash band, so we just sat around and chatted about bands we liked for the hour and a half. It was fun. I have ten years on high school kids, so they seem a little bit like goofballs to me, but they’re excited about things in a way most adults aren’t, and it makes them hard to not like. They say some goofy things, but, hey. I said most of those same things when I was 17, and I STILL say a lot of stupid things.
She kind of reminded me of a teenage me, at least in respect to her enthusiasm for music. Not specifically the bands that she liked (although there was a lot of overlap. She was really into Pantera, and she LOVED Slipknot), but the way that she felt about them.
She was very, very into all of her bands, convinced that they were significant in ways that they probably aren’t.
Okay, so maybe it IS a verifiable fact that Slipknot is awesome. They have two guys in the band who's only job is to stand on top of drum sets and freak out.
She seemed to believe that what’s good and what isn’t is a black-and-white, absolute-truth kind of thing and not a matter of preference – that “Slipknot is good” is just as provable as “2+2=4″, not just a completely subjective opinion.
She had a lot of her identity tied up in her music, so I think that she had to turn her nose up at bands she would’ve liked but that didn’t sync with her self image, and also listen to some bands that I think she mostly “liked” because she thought that she should. For instance, she loves Dream Theater because they’re really “talented” (I have trouble believing that anyone actually likes Dream Theater, no matter how good they are at playing their instruments). On the other hand, she can’t understand the joy of listening to “Chains of Love” by Erasure, because she can’t enjoy anything without double bass drums and screaming without worrying that someone will be judging her (She’s got a point, but when a song is as hot as Chains of Love, you have to realize that every rule has exceptions. Hot, nasty, spiky-haired, vinyl-pants-wearing exceptions.)
I have a theory about this. Most people who are really into music have a band or two that they claim to like just because they think that they should like that band. Then, when people ask them about the music they like, they can talk about how great that CD is and how it completely changed the face of the genre.
Here’s the thing, though: They don’t actually like that music. They tolerate it, but when they’re alone and there’s no one to impress, they never actually listen to it. No one is more likely to do this than a teenager. Some of them (including teenage me) feel like they’re defined by the music that they listen to, and so they have to be sure that they’re listening to the “correct” bands, regardless of how much they like them.
A lot of people do this with The Trout Mask Replica. I’ve listened to it. As near as I can tell, it’s a bunch of atonal 1970′s blues, but people talk about it like it’s the Citizen Kane of music. Maybe it really is good, but I’m apparently not sharp enough to grasp its brilliance (although I suppose that shouldn’t surprise me, because I listen to terrible music for the most part). Tell me what you think:
3OH!3 is the most recent example of this that I can think of. At the beginning of this school year, Everyone in 8th grade and up was obsessed with them. Now, everyone claims to hate them because they “sold out”. Students say that it’s because the band has somehow changed, but they only have one album, so I think that it has more to do with the fact that lots and lots of people know who they are and like them now. I’ve tried to discuss this with students – that the album that they were obsessed with six months ago sounds EXACTLY the same now as it did then, but they don’t seem to buy it. I guess what I’m saying is, if you go from loving an album to hating it because other people listen to it, did you ever actually like it in the first place?
I think most of the time people break out of this habit (although not all of them. I know a 23 year old that has a terminal case of it). I was guilty of it – and I’ll bet I still am, I’m just not self aware enough to identify the ways that I do it now. But one day, you finally decide that it’s okay to listen to goofy music that you like, wear uncool clothes and laugh at low-brow movies that you find funny. You start basing what you like on what you like, instead of what you think you should like.
You're not impressing anyone, you little shit.
You know where a lot of people never shake this shit, though? Books. People buy and read assloads of self help books, airy humor, Twilight and romance novels.
If you ASK people what they read, though, they almost always only list a bunch of pretentious 500 page classics in foreign languages that nobody actually enjoys reading. SOMEONE is buying Dr. Phil’s books, but no one is willing to fess up to it – if it’s you and you like them, quit being a fucking pussy about it, and admit that you like them. Don’t try to impress me with some bullshit about how much you love A Tale of Two Cities and 1984. I’ll start things off. I just finished reading “the War of Art”, which is really just 150 pages of a guy finding different ways to say “GET PUMPED ABOUT BEING CREATIVE!”
Your turn.
And if you tell me that you are a “voracious” reader, so help me God I will punch you in the goddamn face. It irritates me on two levels: first of all, people always say this because they are trying to make it sound like they’re casually telling you about a hobby, when what they’re really trying to do is impress you, the same way lawyers and Harvard alums are always desperately trying to slip that information into casual conversation.
Second of all, it irritates me that they use the word “voracious”. Nobody uses this word for anything other than to maximize how douchy they sound when they’re describing their reading habits. No one ever says “I didn’t have many friends growing up, but I didn’t mind because I was a voracious masturbater,” or “No, I don’t have a television anymore, but I don’t need that idiot box, because I’m a voracious paint-huffer”. People only use that word when they’re describing how they read. It’s just another opportunity to sound like a dick. Besides, nobody is going to understand those fancy multisyllabic words you’re saying with my balls stuffed in your mouth. Then you will be feeling far too lugubrious to tell anyone how voracious your reading habits are, you obsequious addlepate.
See what a dick I sound like when I talk like that?
I’m getting off topic.
We talked about some other bands, and I mentioned a few that I had really loved in high school that I now realized were pretty terrible (see Limp Bizkit). I told her that at least one of the bands she liked would be like that, too. It was hard to say which one, but in ten years, she would look back at how much she loved that band and wonder to herself “what the fuck was I thinking?’
She was polite enough to let me say that without arguing, but I could tell that she thought that I was being stupid, which I guess makes sense. When you’re in high school, you’re pretty sure that you already know everything that there is to know. No one can really have any insights that you haven’t already figured out, and so advice from other people is pretty useless. Either you already knew it, or you disagree with it, so you think it’s wrong. It’ll happen, though. It happens to everyone.
As I’ve mentioned, this is why I refuse to get a tattoo; I can only imagine the kind of stupid shit that I would have on my body for the rest of my life if I’d gotten one in my early 20′s. Hell, a middle school girl I know recently got a tattoo of her boyfriend’s name on her back. She’ll definitely never not regret that decision. That’s what I told her, actually.
Anyway, it was kind of fun to just get some time to chat with her. She was pretty cool, and I usually have 30 kids in a classroom, so I can’t really talk to them because I have to make them watch a video or fill out worksheets, and I don’t really like hanging out with them in my free time. Spending that hour and a half talking kind of reminded me what it felt like to be a teenager, and have that supercharged enthusiasm for everything that I liked and everything that I did. I don’t think I care about anything anymore as much as she cares about seeing Slayer live this summer. I kind of miss that.
But I really do like being able to enjoy “Chains of Love”.
Someday, she will too.
And now, you can.
Live.
On The Rosie O’Donnel Show.
I almost want to be gay when I hear this song.
Did I say almost? I meant “absolutely”.