Try, little puppy, try. Maybe someday you'll be so cool the stars will cry.
posted by jeremy on July 26, 2004
There are several reasons I'm moving to New Orleans; This is one of them. I can no longer stomach the scene here in our beloved city, the greedy clutching claw of it. I'm beginning to feel like I'm back in high school. The snobbery & back-stabbery. The attention to uniform & class. The hierarchy all these shits have set for themselves. It's beginning to feel like everyone in this town fancies themselves a rock star or is trying to be a rock star or at least wants a crack at sucking a rock star's dick. I've tried to ignore this aspect of PDX for a couple of years but it's becoming quite fucking suffocating. It's infecting even myself. I'm sitting here in my ironic t-shirt, typing away at this website, listening to Devendra Bernhardt's newest album & I'm beginning to realize, this music is annoying as shit... & I turn it off.
I've never craved popularity. Back in the darkest ages of middle school the concept seemed impossible. I was geek. I was dork & worst of all, I liked science, I read voraciously, I was Nerd: Hear me squeak. In junior high, after I started skateboarding, it, coolness, became a semi-reality; I definitely jumped up a notch. After I proved myself a talented skater, got sponsored, started dressing the part & acting a bit dumber, my flock of friends grew... But the damage had already been done in middle school: I did not want to be liked, not for something as inane as being able to pull a 360 varial kickflip, wearing baggy jeans & talking the slang of 1990. Fickle fucks, I thought even then. I wanted to be liked for what was really me, whatever that happens to have been, I still don't know.
Eventually, in the same fell swoop that I changed schools, I quit skateboarding & so, suddenly friendless, I roamed alone thru the halls of a new school my junior year. Gotta say, there is a lot to be said for having compatriots... Still, I learned not to need them & over & over again, I suppose I always have. But that year of our lord especially, now-distant-1992, brewed in me a tolerance, even a craving, for solitude.
My senior year, I fell in with the sceneless scene & together we were eventually considered some of the coolest kids in the school, though at the time, we had no idea. Through scraps of information garnered years afterwards, several of us deciphered our place in the school hierarchy of opinion. We were considered cool for not caring, not dressing the part, barely even bothering to attend. Though shunned at the time, fans came foward later, gave us "props for doing your own thing, wish I woulda." What I thought then, I think now: Yeah, monkey, ya shoulda.
Now, a decade & many scenes, many cities later, I attend a party barely removed from the juvenile desperation of 12th grade, or 6th grade, for that matter. It's a hot night towards the end of July & I hula hoop with my 5 friends, zip the zip line stretched thru the vast tangled backyard, drink too much beer & mostly, keep quiet, watch all the sad little interactions. In the past, quietness was a sign of some subtle coolness. Not so, now, the sound of your own voice is all the rage: Infinite blah blah blah.
Jesus god, this cacophony of boring minutiae could make even the most saintly want to bitch slap, with due violence, the next person who exclaims in a shrill voice "OMYGOD, THAT IS JUST THE CUTEST SHIRT EVER!!!" & I shit you not, I heard this exact statement about five times thru the evening, cross referenced with about 10 billion other comments on fashion. Our lives here, on this dying starving planet, boiled down to clothing & music? I'm afraid the answer is a great big fucking yes. At least here. At least now. The defining curve of Portland set by the neurosis of a shallow few... Is this how Cool fucking comes into existence? Who makes these decisions? Who decides who is cool? & why is it the supposedly coolest are always the biggest waste?
It seems like the lurching panic of cows to me, as I swig Miller high life & watch the dynamics of this particular slaughter house. One cow freaks out, takes off, the others follow, never actually knowing why they are running, just that everyone else is doing it...
& a cliff looms ahead: The death of your self-respect.
The worst is watching someone get shot down. Micro-scenario: Person A hesitantly approaches person B, initiates small random talk. You can tell, thru some nearly imperceptible social cues that person B outranks person A in the hipster continuum, thru the advantage of being a rock star or maybe having once sucked a rock star's cock & so person A tries her/his hardest to entertain, be witty, funny, cynical, climb that fucking ladder. Person B nods, says the cool stuff, totally assured in this situation, being top dog or bitch or whatever. You can tell person A thinks, shit, this is working, I'm making a friend, a popular friend, I'm cooler than I was 10 minutes ago, fuckin-A... & then, at this precise moment, person C breezes in, as stunning as Audrey Hepburn & person B immediately responds, turns away from A in mid-sentence, strikes up a far more socially-rewarding conversation, walking away, arm in arm with C, no goodbyes, nothing...
& A, left stuttering, turns away, tries to act as if this was cool, all part of the act & I'm standing there, watching all this go down, mildly embarrassed, yet so so glad I don't play these games...
I'm glad that I know these games are for assholes.
& yeah, so I keep quiet, I don't try & most of my friends keep quiet, don't try. For us to try to be cool in this environment, well, it's like paying rent for a house you don't sleep in; It would be ridiculous. This is why my friends are my friends. They don't play these games, they don't sell out their self respect for the condescending nod of some scenester & yet my friends, (or not even my friends, let's just say the people that I like...) are the ones that are kind, open, accepting, not constantly wrapped in some Machievelian maneuver to further their standing in some ambigious scene.
I won't say we aren't non-judgemental, because that's what this chunk of rant is all about, isn't it? Judging you useless hipster fucks; I will openly admit that.
& so I'm leaving for New Orleans, to discover fresh blood, risk my place, hoping for adventure & bright new insights... Yet I go knowing the self-imposed hierarchy is everywhere, the Scene invades everything...
People are insecure everywhere.
