Speaking of cool people, these neon sunglasses fill me with an almost unspeakable rage.
Nothing makes people my age, cool people of a certain age, more douchy, more unsupportable and odious, then music. Music is the nexus of pretension and wankery among people my age, we of generation Y, we who survived the faux-punk era of the early 2000’s, we who derive great and perverse pleasure from bludgeoning one another with our knowledge of music arcane. I will do pretty much anything to avoid talking about music with other People My Age. I will crawl through trenches of broken glass and bury my head in flower pots and run jibbering into the night. I will avoid Discussing Music at all costs.
Human worth is assessed for people of a certain age and a certain social echelon by the music they listen to and are familiar with. Coping to a fondness for stuff that is mainstream, uninteresting, or simply uncool by some complex and incomprehensible metric can lead to social ruin and dissolution. Further, one’s opinion of Acceptable and Non Acceptable music must remain a fluid and transient thing as life goes on and one ages and becomes (presumably) more sophisticated and awesome. A 15 year olds fondness for garage psychedelic music becomes embarrassing when the advanced age of 21 is achieved, a 16 year old’s new found admiration for Django Reindhart becomes embarrassingly provincial as they enter university and the more exclusive social circles.
No, a young person who aspires to any semblance of currentness must continually advance their knowledge of obscurity, their willingness to listen to noise metal that sounds like recorded and guttural vomit, their ability to memorize facts about bassist’s assistants nose hairs. So much hangs in the balance.
It is because of Music that I despise talking to people in clubs. First: no one should talk to each other in clubs, at least in good ones. In a good club the music should be excellent and the booze should be, if not excellent, at least cheap and easy to obtain. If these two elements are in place then no one should be talking to each other as nothing good can come of discussion, except for poorly advised sex. Further, when someone talks to me in a club, I am forced to engage in the mighty hipster Social Dance, wherein my opponent/new best friend attempts to ferret out my music preferences to assess if I am worthy of their time and attention. This usually occurs in the guise of a few pointed questions about What I Listen To.
There was a time when I was foolish and frightened, and reader, I played the game. I told them what I liked, exactly that and no more. When I said What I Liked, the other party’s reaction was invariable controlled, slow burning disdain, a shifting of weight,an arching of the eyebrow. I said something wrong, even I could figure that one out, but the maddening element of it was that I did not know what, exactly, was wrong. I did develop a few survival strategies. The first was to immediately rattle off the most incredibly obscure artists and bands I knew of, in the hope of stupefying the other person long enough for me to escape to the ladies room.
Unfortunately, this did not always work for I do not know nearly enough obscure bands. Often, I would (to my horror) register a band that was Cool. This meant the other person would flip their black-dyed hair and sip their drink and say, “Oh, aren’t they amazing? Aren’t they cool? I saw them about twelve times in Brooklyn in the Young Donkey’s Underground Club and we used to get wasted together, real cool guys. What did you think of their third LP, I mean, really think? Too much reverb?”
I hated this. I had no idea the band in question even had a third LP. I’m still not really sure what the hell an LP is, and I would have to fire up Google and lurk in a corner for a bit to figure out what, pray tell, reverb might be. When someone asked me their opinion on these things I had two bad options: try to bullshit my way through the conversation until I reasonably could run for the bathroom, or simply admit I didn’t know a damn thing about their third LP and be regarded as if I were the Queen of Lame, the Lame Mistress, the Lamest Human on Earth.
Another potential minefield was the Band Currently Playing, when one is at a show in a nightclub where cool people converge and spawn. I can usually find something at least tolerable in most music (this too precludes me from coolness) – which leads always to terrible conversations. I will meet someone at a club and they will ask me about the band as I am getting my drink. I will smile in an ingratiating way and say, “I think they’re very good.” The other person, who has a stud in the middle of their chin how do you even do that, will sigh theatrically, regard me hard, and say, “Really? I think they’re terrible.” And I will be forced to backpedal, or burrow into the bar-area, or (dream of) smashing my drink over my head. For saying that you actually like something is the greatest social suicide. No one is allowed to actually like things anymore.
I used to try to bullshit – it’s not very hard. You just repeat everything they say to you. Perhaps the hipster boy who accosted me in the corner might say, “I really liked the use of polyphonic tambourine on the fifth track. The one about Sumeria.”
Wherein I would think swiftly back to my expensive liberal education and parry. “Oh,, I thought their interpretation of the Gilgamesh myth was real cool, the whole humping-Enkidu bit, the noble savage motif. With the recorders. And all.”
“Enkidu, huh? Maybe the recorder symbolized the fall of man, I guess. A primitive instrument, Yeah, you really got it, you really made me think!”
And I would be safe. I would watch as my skinny-jean wearing opponent walked away, a cheap but culturally acceptable beer in their hand, and I would breathe a sigh of relief.
I don’t care anymore. I like to listen to Lady GaGa, Cat Stevens, and Bob Seger. I think people who produce noise metal should really turn down their amps and get a real job. I find Of Montreal repellant (I believe the lead singer is not nearly self-loathing enough for an indie band member, self confidence merely demeans and dilutes them). Once I was nearly moved to tears by a Celtic folk song about Irish immigrants and I am not even Irish. I recently made up a dance routine once to Justin Timberlake’s immortal “Sexy Back” and performed it in mixed company. I will never in a million years be cool. I give it up and abscond with it.
I am not ashamed, I am not ashamed, and I am not ashamed, no longer.
PS: Is douchey a word???
PPS: If it isn’t it should become one really soon. I call people a douche all the time. It might be my calling card.
PPPS: Is that another obnoxious sub-hipster conceit? Should I knock that off? Is that another repulsive aspect of my personality?
PPSS: Why, I am very neurotic. I should join an indie band myself and spend my time looking mad at people in clubs.
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