POST-PUNK: A POST ABOUT PUNK

(This was originally three different posts, which I have consolidated into one entry so that it reads chronologically.)

I.
When I was home over Christmas break, I was showing my dad some bulky sweater that I wanted to buy, and after viewing a series of bulky sweaters online, he summarized them: "Oh, so kind of a hipster look." Now, whatever. Who knows what he thinks that means. But what it definitely meant was, "Ah, this set of stimuli, I hereby file away under category X, never to disturb me again." It didn't mean, "Oh, I could see myself wearing that, if only I were younger," or, "I can see how that would be fashionable in New York but not here in the suburbs." I would liken it to the part in the Terminator movies, where you see behind Arnold's "eyes" and see the computer run through the series of possible identifications and responses. The computer doesn't "see" things--it categorizes them; the kind of categorization I am describing files things away so precisely *not* to see them. And something as innocuous as a bulky sweater!

My dad's response to this criticism was (partially) that I do this more than anyone--with all my subgenres and critical -isms, and of course my favorite category, "bourgeois." However, the infinite variety of different "cores" and "isms" at least testifies to a willingness to open up new categories when so demanded, and I will have something more to say about the bourgeois in a moment. My point is, the world is infinitely more various than our comprehension of it. To have a fixed number of categories guarantees confusion. This is the cause of nearly every argument I have with my dad. When he asks me a question like, "Is that in the Village?" when I have been describing something in New York, I have to allow that his conception of Greenwich Village is and will always be a term that encompasses probably 1/2 of Manhattan (this is a made-up example). But really, everything has to be filed away like this under a heading he is aware of. For example, my dad (in this fictional example) doesn't know NOLITA. Therefore, it is in the Village. Of course, to any one instance of this, I am "overreacting." I don't think so. Not only because it isn't just one thing, and it isn't just my dad.

My definition of the bourgeois, to be given in a moment, is completely unsurprising and I think we will all agree with it. It is not a Marxist definition, although I certainly see that behind it. It could roughly be given as: "the status quo," but that is so boring and not quite what I mean. And this is a category I make use of A LOT. But, unlike my dad's use of "hipster," I don't mean "bourgeois" ever as a "case-closed" recognition of a phenomena, but it is always something slightly cryptic and only partially descriptive. It is, basically, a poor adjective for most things. It isn't a subject heading, and is so vague as to be almost useless. But here's my definition: The bourgeois is that which does not want to be disturbed.

Now, let me give you another quote, from Flaubert: "Hatred of the bourgeois is the beginning of virtue." The bourgeois, of course, returns the favor. All of my favorite thinkers, Freud, Derrida, Baudrillard, Nietzsche, Marx, etc. are universally despised by our conventional wisdom. Freud is "discredited," Derrida's death was greeted with the nastiest obituary in the NY Times, Baudrillard is a lunatic, Nietzsche retrospectively a Nazi, Marx "works only on paper," and so forth. It's so ludicrous. But this enmity, this stubborn, mudslinging, empty (yet white-hot) hatred from all corners of respectable society...this is what you get. Why not embrace it?

To me, that can be the only definition for punk--in this moment, in this socio-economic order, in countries like this one--taking upon oneself the onerous and ugly position you already will have been given by hating/disturbing the bourgeois. "You're already going to hate me, let me make it easy for you, and clear for everyone else."

A problem immediately arises: this could be only an empty gesture. What if you are harmless, and yet you take on this aspect? You are easily IGNORED. In fact, this is what we see. No one sees a punk on the street and thinks "Oh, this person wants to DESTROY ME." This should be the case, unfortunately that ship sailed long ago.

Nonetheless, I refuse to admit what many have conceded to the bourgeois in a kind of postmodern defeatism-- that resistance, hatred, disturbance of the existing order is *already* "empty" and "co-opted" and a "floating signifier." Not that these things aren't true, but what is the logic here? That because "Nothing's shocking" anymore, we all should be content to let critical thought die out? This seems to be the argument.

This is probably why punk has such a low retention rate. It promises disillusioned kids a chance to change the world, to piss off their parents, to have crazy adventures, read Chomsky and go to protests, have an obnoxious diet, stupid hair, etc. And it should be all those things. But it can't be all those things ONLY, because then you realize 1) you haven't changed the world, 2) you don't even care about your parents, 3) you aren't having interesting adventures, 4) protests are dumb, 5) your stupid hair is getting in the way of meeting girls or getting a job, etc.

So, what are you left with? Some vague politics and being vegetarian. And some mp3s. Well, that hardly seems worth the effort. And here is the, "Well, what now?" question.

II.
OK, so this goes on--but not without a caveat or two first. This blog is really for people who know me, who I saw the day before (in which case, I have probably stolen our conversation and put it in blog form), or friends who I don't see that often and we only communicate by reading each other's blogs, or my parents and other well-wishers.

Of course, it is definitely ALSO for haters, but I feel like reading my blog without knowing me (or without giving a wide berth and confidence that I will end up somewhere), is probably just to get back your own message in return: duh. This isn't an academic treatise--I'm sure you noticed--there are gaps everywhere that I haven't filled in, that will be much easier for someone with some patience or knowledge to fill in. This is why I try to make everything fairly personal and evidently self-involved--not because "it's all about me," but so that no one will ever forget that there is a definite *perspective* from which this is originating.

So, my last post began by talking about my dad. That's something I'd like to return to here, for two reasons: 1) so that no one will EVER forget that everything I say comes from a certain place, certain things about my family and my upbringing that I love, certain things I want to destroy, and--if one were to forget that--then to get upset about what I'm leaving out/getting wrong/etc. Let's just say, I'm writing about me. I hope you learn something about you, but that is really up to how you read.

So, my dad. The first Black Flag album originally carried a "warning" sticker with a quote from the president of MCA records saying: "As a parent, I found it to be an anti-parent record." If there was ONE THING punk meant to me as an unpopular, dorky kid, it was Black Flag's ultimate dictum--don't become your parents. Now, I love my parents. Whatever. Hi, Mom.

To me, what was great about punk was that it wasn't just to "piss off" your parents, since anything can do that. It's the message: "don't BE your parents." Now, I know kids from high school who are already married, have kids, etc, so that at least literally, they already ARE parents (if not yet their own). But punk, to the extent that it is "not just a phase" and that it will have an eventual meaning in this discussion, is--wait--precisely that: that punk is not just a phase and will mean something IS in its not-being-just-a-phase.

Savvy?

All other youth culture is just that...youth culture. Punk, which of course everyone grows out of to some extent, in a way--and defining that will be the important thing--is something more irrevocable. It's something life-changing. It sticks with you. And of course, I'm not talking about people in bands or the rare few who can make a living within punk, and therefore don't have to leave or even step outside of it. I mean, obviously I've chosen to step well outside of punk for my chosen career. And maybe someone's answer will be, "oh, you blew it--if you aren't living in a squat and doing politics and making hardcore and eating communal dumpstered pasta, and instead are reading Barthes in your ivory tower, you lost it, you can't be punk anymore." And I TAKE THAT VERY SERIOUSLY. In the most literal sense, it's obviously true. Fact. Ok, so let's all take a deep breath and see that I am not trying to put together my life with *that* particular vision, which has its charms but really is not for me.

And here we arrive at the furthest I will dilute any definition of punk. As Gerard Manley Hopkins writes, "Enough!"

To recap this detour: not being one's parents, and making a new life out of that--fine, but that can't be everything punk is: I go to an Ivy league school, I live in New York, I read XXXXXX author, I listen to XXXXXX shit bands, I'm vegan, I don't have a real job, I live in a room the size of my laptop-- none of those things really have anything to do with punk, they just are things the complete opposite of my parents' existence. Punk HAS to be something else than just being a grad student, wearing tight pants, talking to Talya, and buying records I don't have the time to listen to. Duh. But really, some days, I'd like to pretend that is all it is.

I need to go to bed right now, and I want to get this post up, but let me leave you with one unsatisfactory answer, and one open question that I'll get back to. My interests, my personality, my style of thinking, my writing, my general disdain for humanity, my politics (such as they are)--these things aren't going anywhere. I am no nearer to being a normal, functioning member of society than ever. And that's not, in itself, punk. But I feel just as far away from everything as when I was 16, and yes, in a more complicated way, but really just in a sadder way. If I don't relate to DOA's lyrics anymore, and if Crass' politics seem a bit rickety, well-- that doesn't mean that I've found anything better: it's just all the sadder. But that makes it sound like punk is just "one more thing I can't relate to." But so is Victorian literary criticism, so are my best friends. Which is just to say, I hope that I have done some growing up, but all the procedures of growing up are just as full of shit as anything when I was younger---I mean, I thought high school was stupid, but it has nothing on the "real world"---and I guess I am still not willing to make those compromises. Not only that, I still despise people who do. If I am at all "better-adjusted" (which is by no means certain) than when I was a kid, it only makes clear that I will never be *well*-adjusted. And, again, that itself isn't "punk."

This is where we need to think some more about it. When I was a kid, simply being upset about all this was enough. That's what loud music is for. Now, it's like...well, here I spend 16 hours a day reading and thinking about "big ideas," and on the other hand, I have a completely alienated experience from everyone around me--maybe that is not a coincidence which I should just overlook. Maybe it's precisely that I am not thinking the same things which is *the thing* here.

So, I am still a person upset at the world, maybe more than ever, definitely in a more difficult and complicated way than before--and now that I've diluted the definition of punk where it maybe looks like I am willing to say that somehow MERELY being unhappy and listening to the Yardbirds somehow counts towards being punk, I'd like to say, OF COURSE NOT--and this is what I will reconstitute in the next post.


III.
So far, I've ruled out the following things as being the definition of punk, although some of them are obviously important, and we may want to define punk by a combination of these ideas, or set them off against each other:

- pissing off your parents
- being politically active
- fashion
- diet
- being sixteen

And now, I'd like to unveil the two things I find most important in punk: DIY, which I have left out of the argument until now, and that which I began with, the self-imposed stigma of being anti-(whatever). I am inclined to say, anti-bourgeois, because for me, that says it all. That may not be the case for you. I am not inclined to define it here, but let's just say that I see both major political parties in America as bourgeois parties, and so by default I am talking about 98% of the electorate. To that, I would add nearly all of corporate culture (an oxymoron if ever there was one), the latently racist, sexist and homophobic, the religious, law enforcement, and everyone complicit in disseminating the falsehoods which prop up the illusion that any of this is worth preserving. AGH. So, it's a broad definition, and if clearly 98% of America is not technically "bourgeois," I want to let stand the more troubling implication that the problem of class in our country is precisely what we don't want to know about.

If you'll recall, this is a kind of circular logic-- earlier, I defined the bourgeois as "that which doesn't want to be disturbed" by any knowledge, and here I am saying that class is precisely that knowledge that we don't want to know about. So, here I can only give you the tautology, the American bourgeois fantasy is only sustained by repressing the knowledge that it IS a fantasy.

Punk, as conventional wisdom never tires of pointing out, shatters this fantasy. At the most basic level, punk wants no part of self-congratulatory, teleological liberal utopias nor in the comforts of religion and regressive order. And punk can only be punk if it disturbs, criticizes, agitates, and brings down upon itself the ire of the keepers of this fantasy.

To which I will add, THAT is the message. And the medium is DIY. That's punk--and it should sound like The Ramones, Discharge, and Black Flag.

I think that rules out everything that would either try and "sneak in" or those things which a vague definition would accidentally include: mere fashion, hippies, Foucault, burnouts, hipsters, metalheads, Nate Treadwell, indie-pop, emos, computer programmers, etc.

As far as what this has to do with me, I can only say, a) DIY is an ideal. It is not always possible, but as much as I can, my life-ideal is to work with it and through it. No kidding; b) On the other count, I think no one will begrudge it to me if I say that I expect to bring a great deal of ire down on myself before it is all through.