Last night Becky and I had a succesful wine-fueled talk about money, or, rather, lack thereof. Her new job is awesome, but it's part time. Her plan to make crafts and sell 'em is on, but she's just starting out. My stipend is generous by grad-student-in-the-humanities standards, but that's like being the world's tallest midget.The problem is that we were both raised resolutely (upper-) middle class, so we think that things like yearly vacations and dinners out and so on are "normal," despite knowing that most people on planet earth are still busy barely scratching out a living and/or field-stripping their AK-47s. So here we are, she's a burgeoning artist / academic adminstrator, I'm a would-be historian, and we're just as broke as we've been since early 2004.
Here's the point: I miss punk rock. I miss the music, the clothes, the tats, the flipping your friends off and being afraid of skinheads at shows. I miss favorite bands that barely knew how to play. I miss stacks of LPs and people getting scabies. I miss half racks of PBR and dirty Converse and thrift stores. I miss being drunk six nights a week.
Most of all, I miss the core of the PR ethic: there's no future worth looking forward to, so let's revel in some low-fidelity nihilism and have as much fun as possible before we all get nuked. I miss not caring. To me, that was the real point of the whole subculture; the incoherent politics and the vast range of music that fell under the punk umbrella was secondary to the sincere not-giving-of-a-fuck, ESPECIALLY about things like money and status and ambition.
Not surprisingly, I was a lousy punk at the time (i.e. I went straight to college after high school and drove myself as hard as I could). But I miss feeling like I could give up and have that be ok.
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(warning: long, rambling thoughts to follow) I was just thinking the other day about growing up in the 80's, when The Day After was a big deal. Blade Runner and Mad Max were super popular and general apocolyptic themes ran amuck. I'm thinkin' that those things powered my "why fight the future?" attitude I had for a long time... an attitude I'm just now rejecting via this whole teaching gig. I'm not sure what spun me. Was it that I just couldn't stand seeing Mr. Bush and his cronies taking advantage anymore? Mayhaps. Now here I am, by trying to prep our future citizens to become more reasonable.
so surprising and amazing.
You're missing the final line of your post" "This must be a sign we're getting old." I feel it too, although mostly when I reference NKOTB and none of my students know who I'm talking about.
Yeah, me too. I remember being very careful to pay attention to how fun it all was. If anything, the only thing I regret is not being even more reckless at the time, since recklessness is no longer in the cards.
I wonder what that feels like? To sincerely, really not give a damn? I can't remember ever letting go enough to feel that way. Plus, I've never had the money to afford not to give a damn.
yep. growing up is weird. i too miss not caring. though i still hold on to a large part of not caring, what i don't care about has drastically shifted.
Speaking of this type of musical scene, have you seen "American Hardcore" yet, if so, is it any good?
I just want to be able to drink without worrying about my liver exploding. Seriously, I'm allowed one drink a week and I don't even do that because, meh, what's the point? Also, go to my website and recommend some karaoke songs for my playlist. I'm going to make an actual disc of the music with no vocals and include a book of lyrics. I'm starting with songs that girls can sing whether originally sung by guys but want to do a guy playlist next. That'll make you feel punk rock. ;)
I hear you, man. Those were the days. At least we had them, so now we can put the old copy of Suburbia in the VCR and reminisce. At least that's what I do.
this should probably be a blog entry not a comment, as it is too fucking long...
I was just thinking about this as my boyfriend and I crawled into bed at 9:30 last night and I was thinking about it last friday night as we set an alarm so we could get up and go to a plant nursery bright and early before going ice skating for the anatomist's birthday. The thing is, I definitely paid my dues to the quote unquote punk rock life style (never mind that I was listening to country half the time and never mind that I too was a passably good student in college) and I was getting pretty haggard. As to Rachel's comment about money, being poverty stricken actually gave me the freedom to not give a shit....but onward...I'm happy where I am but I still worry that I'll wake up morning and find myself a yuppie, or that my whole life will devolve into one long conversation about cell phone plans or house plants or ikea. Walk the middle path grasshopper....Only I guess being 'punk rock' was never really about walking the middle path, was it? It's hard to be extreme in moderation.
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