Aging Hipster, Elder Emo
Cancel Me Harder, Daddy
Fair warning: I’ve had a cocktail and a half while writing this week’s installment and it is accordingly disjointed and rambling, while remaining as straight from the heart as always. So you know, par for the course. It’s also probably a bit more brief because, ya know, sometimes the words are there and sometimes they’re not, but the sprit remains even in their absence.
If it’s a tad too disjointed for you this week, well, come back next week for what may well be a marginal improvement!
Let’s get after it.
Something to Listen To
Against all odds, 7 year, 7 months, and 7 days after releasing their (so far) last album (and, you know, some other stuff that was def not great but seems to have been blown way out of proportion in the collective memory), Brand New is set to return to the stage later this month.
Against further odds, the lady friend managed to secure us tickets to see the third of the three booked shows later this month in Nashville, TN. So I guess I’m going to Nashville in a few weeks.
Anyway, the chorus rings true now and forever like a mantra lying in wait for your best and worst days: “Keep the blood in your head and keep your feet on the ground.”
Life is weird right now, so don’t forget that as long as there is blood in your head and your feet are on the ground, you can keep going.
Something to Watch
While we’re on the topic of early/mid aughts, elder emo stuff, this week’s something to watch is a perfect time capsule of a time I’d give nearly anything to go back to: 2002. Not me personally, I was 19 and that was fun and all, but I’m cool being an old geezer at 41 to be honest.
It’s also, I suppose, just another Something to Listen To, but maybe we just deal with that, okay?
Was it that I was young or did the world actually seem better off back then? Remember thinking George W. was, like, recklessly awful? How scary the world seemed in 2002, post-9/11?—look, I promise this isn’t going to be a weekly politically minded substack, of which there are ample alternatives, but FFS. Anyway, remember that?
“Oh no! Not John McCain!” lol. Buckle-up, kids!
This right here, this video, encapsulates so perfectly what I do miss about the early aughts. The fashion is just perfect, but really it’s the earnestness of the music and, even more so, the fans singing every along to every word as if they were being ripped out of the fibers of their very hearts. When the biggest problem you had was whether or not that girl (or boy, equal opportunity here) liked you and then, if they did, whether or not they kissed someone else like a bitch/asshole/insert-preferred-derogatory-here.
I actually saw Dashboard Confessional (at Mississippi Nights!) in 2002, so this is just wildly spot-on for me.
This is the kind of heartache and strife I imagined guiding my son through, not whatever the hell it is we seem to be barreling toward now.
Something to Read
Personally, I suspect that the root of many of the problems we face as a society today are due to attaching too damn much to too damn much. We pick teams and convince ourselves those teams matter.
I’m a Cubs fan and my boss (and some of my best friends) are Cardinals fans and I suppose I could hate them for that but that seems ridiculous because it’s sports. Then again, I can’t imagine knowingly befriending a Packers fan, but that’s beside the point.
We’ve all seen videos, heard stories, or even experienced those people who care too damn much about the team to whom they have pledged allegiance. We’ve heard the ridicule and jeering that goes beyond good natured ribbing. Over sports.
But of course, sports is not life and life is not sports. But we treat it that way. We all-or-nothing everything. I am Team A which means you believe 1, 2, 3-n+1. If you disagree with any of that, you disagree with me and you are negating me… or even threatening me. With your disagreement.
Then again, if I really believe I am X and you don’t like X, then you don’t like me, fore I am X. Maybe what we need is less identity. Have ideas! Have characteristics! Have principles! But those are no more You than the thoughts that fly across your consciousness. They are mere datapoints, they are not the whole.
It’s a helluva lot easier to change your ideas than to change who you are. If you find yourself furious at a friend, coworker, neighbor, family member who simply cannot let go of their backwards-ass ideas… maybe consider what you’re holding onto as closely as they’re holding onto those ideas.
Keep yourself open, keep yourself free, Keep Your Identity Small (by Paul Graham).
Something to Consider
Do you ever wonder if the people you disagree with wonder about the people they disagree with?
I’m going to take a wild swing here that I probably don’t have too many ardent-Trumpers reading my little musing I send into The Void, but that’s certainly not by design. I don’t really care about who you voted for, because I suspect you probably had reasons other than the easier assumptions of those who tend to fall closer to the left end of the spectrum tend to assume.
I digress.
What do you think that they (those ardent-Trumpers) think of you? I bet, at the very least, you assume they have flattened you out to a paper doll of stereotypical ‘Libtard’ nonsense. And you know what, maybe you are that libtard paper doll… but probably not. I know I’m not because I can have a conversation with seemingly anyone at any point on the American political spectrum and somehow leave it with them thinking I’m a damned fool.
Because, well, I’m complex.
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.
Walt Whitman
Pro tip, guys: I’m pretty sure borrowing those final three words scored me multiple swipes on the dating apps,
Anyway, the digressions continue.
I suppose I am beating my hobbyhorse here, but we’re all these just ridiculous, impossibly complex creatures floating through life through no choice of our own, influenced by factors far outside our influence or control, and making choices totally constricted by our experience and awareness over which we had no real control.
We know this of ourselves, but we forget that for others.
When you screw-up, it was an innocent mistake, When your partner, parent, or coworker screws up it’s far more likely to be because they are a thoughtless fool. When that guy across the street votes for the other candidate, or supports the other point of view, it’s because they’re a callous and cruel ideologue living in a bubble… across the street (thankfully, narrowly, extending to just the other side of our own home).
I guess what I’m trying to say as the effects of now two full cocktails take hold is this: Life is hard and complex and really just generally makes no sense, so maybe take it easy on each other. And maybe, just maybe, if we do that, we can finally work our way out of this nonsense.
Keep the blood in your head and keep your feet on the ground.