Okay, for the record: I think blogs like this are generally pretentious and only slightly less annoying than people whining about their love-lives. However, I don't care. I've been thinking about this quite a bit lately, so I thought I would write about it and maybe figure out my own thought process on the matter; really I think I just lost my train of thought three quarters of the way through and came to the conclusion that there's no real need to have a definitve answer on the subject. If I don't stop now I will have an entirely separate and equally inane series of paragraphs. I'm also, perhaps, slightly horrified that I have written this only shortly after seeing the exhibition of '60s psychedlic art at the Whitney...maybe you really do become what you hate the most?
I was at a party the other night and was mistaken for a 'hardcore kid' and when I stated that this was incorrect I was asked if I was a 'metal guy'. I didn't really know how to respond; initially I thought, "Yeah, what the hell am I?" and said, "I'm an artist." Aside from the fact that this is an entirely pretentious response, it's also not altogether true, as I believe that artists are really only artists during the process of art making. If an artist is not making art they are a person that has an interesting hobby. Okay, that may be a little extreme, but basically true. Also, I did grow up listening to hardcore and have been very involved with metal at different times in my life _ I certainly still listen to a shit load of it.
The tendency that most people have to want to classify things and, more specifically, themselves and others seems really strange to me. I don't like the idea of setting up parameters for yourself to operate within; I'm more interested in exploration of experience and possibilities. Creating a rigid framework for your experience could be likened to making a funnel and only allowing very specific or finely groomed events to occur. Granted, this could prevent some bad things from happening to you, but what a personally fascistic way of living. Lately I've felt that I fit in less and less when I go to places like shows or anywhere else that has a defined aesthetic or supposed pretense under which people gather or operate. More importantly, I find that I have less and less desire to fit into these situations or circles. No matter how lose the pillars of an ideology are I still think they are too restrictive. Dogmatic rhetoric just isn't interesting, no matter who it's coming from.
Classification and taxonomy seem like ways of understanding things in a very superficial way, on some level I see this as useful, but generally they are ways to grant one's self the ability to become dismissive of the other. Saying "X" about something is different than saying, "Because of F, R and T then X under the circumstances of W". I don't actually see this as a positive or a negative, but maybe something worth being cognisant of. Certainly, it's an offense committed by both sides as so many people play to the respective stereotypes with which they identify. Ultimately I don't really care, I was just thinking about it and how I like talking to people for the most part, but so often there are really silly social barriers or signifiers that prevent interesting dialogue from occuring. That and sometimes I'm an asshole. At any rate, it doesn't matter all that much as you're going to do what you're going to do and I'm going to do what I'm going to do. I just may have more fun.
I was at a party the other night and was mistaken for a 'hardcore kid' and when I stated that this was incorrect I was asked if I was a 'metal guy'. I didn't really know how to respond; initially I thought, "Yeah, what the hell am I?" and said, "I'm an artist." Aside from the fact that this is an entirely pretentious response, it's also not altogether true, as I believe that artists are really only artists during the process of art making. If an artist is not making art they are a person that has an interesting hobby. Okay, that may be a little extreme, but basically true. Also, I did grow up listening to hardcore and have been very involved with metal at different times in my life _ I certainly still listen to a shit load of it.
The tendency that most people have to want to classify things and, more specifically, themselves and others seems really strange to me. I don't like the idea of setting up parameters for yourself to operate within; I'm more interested in exploration of experience and possibilities. Creating a rigid framework for your experience could be likened to making a funnel and only allowing very specific or finely groomed events to occur. Granted, this could prevent some bad things from happening to you, but what a personally fascistic way of living. Lately I've felt that I fit in less and less when I go to places like shows or anywhere else that has a defined aesthetic or supposed pretense under which people gather or operate. More importantly, I find that I have less and less desire to fit into these situations or circles. No matter how lose the pillars of an ideology are I still think they are too restrictive. Dogmatic rhetoric just isn't interesting, no matter who it's coming from.
Classification and taxonomy seem like ways of understanding things in a very superficial way, on some level I see this as useful, but generally they are ways to grant one's self the ability to become dismissive of the other. Saying "X" about something is different than saying, "Because of F, R and T then X under the circumstances of W". I don't actually see this as a positive or a negative, but maybe something worth being cognisant of. Certainly, it's an offense committed by both sides as so many people play to the respective stereotypes with which they identify. Ultimately I don't really care, I was just thinking about it and how I like talking to people for the most part, but so often there are really silly social barriers or signifiers that prevent interesting dialogue from occuring. That and sometimes I'm an asshole. At any rate, it doesn't matter all that much as you're going to do what you're going to do and I'm going to do what I'm going to do. I just may have more fun.
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Lately I've felt that I fit in less and less when I go to places like shows or anywhere else that has a defined aesthetic or supposed pretense under which people gather or operate.
I feel like this more and more as well. And you're right, shows seem to be particularly bad for this sort of thing. A couple of years ago, a student of mine saw a picture of me from high school complete with long hair, goatee, and metal t-shirt. Her immediate response was, "Wow, you mean you used to be cool?!"
One of my favorite quotes, ever.