WARNING: SELF-INDULGENT LOSERDOM AHEAD.
You’re the kind of girl I like/because you’re empty/and I’m empty/and we can never quarantine the past — Pavement, Gold Soundz
So I haven’t been watching movies in a while (and by a while, I mean > 4 days), and I had started to write an analytical disquisition of sorts (I would like to flatter myself with self-bestowed intellectual authority) about Sofia Coppola’s importance in the film industry, but I just couldn’t go through with it; I’m assuming it’s because I have a lot of things I’m sorting out in my personal life (I always do, apparently, maybe because I’m growing my hair out for the first time in 73 years. Yes, I have, in actual fact, been alive that long) and this post is to facilitate that process. Usually, my self-indulgence is strictly limited to witty banter, and on many occasions I have quite openly admonished blog culture (I refer to the ubiquitous tendency for teenagers to curse wildly at their parents, or to lament the Abril Despedacado-esque tragedy that is their lives), but I really do feel like I need to get stuff off of my chest, although you most certainly will not have the misfortune of me launching , unbridled, into a self-pitying diatribe, nor will you hear me curse or even complain about my parents, who are, without a doubt, the two most important, most wonderful people in my life. Apart from me and my Swedish alter ego, Ingmar, that is.
Ain’t it like most people/I’m no different/we like to talk on things we don’t know about — The Avett Brothers, Ten Thousand Words
(And omg yes, I have written the above paragraph in one take and without the use of a thesaurus or whatever; I have been steadfastly plowing through Angela Carter’s ridiculously extravagant Nights at the Circus and her lavish use of vocabulary unfortunately — because many show-offs I know are secretly stupid and to be affiliated with them is almost hurtful — encourages the same linguistic excess in her readers.)
Grab a calculator/and fix yourself — Nicolas Jaar, Space Is Only Noise If You Can See
We’ll start at the beginning. In Sec. 3, during BSC (Beijing Satellite Campus, this 6-week immersion program in Beijing where we were made to listen to Chinese women talk about Chinese culture and bargain with smug shop vendors), my friend Ming introduced me to the likes of Regina Spektor, Bjork, Kate Bush, Charlotte Martin, Lykke Li, Amy Winehouse, Tori Amos etc. among other artists. Before this, I was an avid follower of Billboard (and I remained so, until last year, actually) and the only artist I really listened to was Mariah Carey. I mean, I liked Prince too but I think only because he commanded a certain artistic integrity that validated my music taste. Obviously, the music videos of Kate Bush dancing provocatively on a double bass (See: Babooshka music video) and of Bjork screaming in a dark room (I forget the song…#lulz) were incredibly strange –by any standards– but were even more so to me because until then I thought that a music video meant an aimless, self-indulgent distillation of an artist’s sex appeal (Watch: Any post-1997 Mariah “My Boobs Are Fucking Hyoooooge” Carey videos). I got into some of the early Kate Bush albums (Lionheart and The Kick Inside are still endlessly surprising listens) but I mean, that was about it. I didn’t really think about its appeal in like, sociological terms and shit. Then the following year, with Ming’s ever-growing presence and influence, I started downloading indie rock playlists. I remember discovering Neutral Milk Hotel’s In The Aeroplane Over The Sea and thinking what the flying fuckkk it was so weird. There were some awesome moments, though, like “For Our Elegant Caste” by Of Montreal, “Britney’s Tears” by The Steeples, “Billionaires” by “Your Twenties”, “Letting Go” by Team Waterpolo etc. (btw you should check them out lulz), and they were so cool and infectious that I at once developed an irrevocable interest in indie music. I justified this interest with my desire to be ‘open-minded’, but in all honesty, I think it pertained to my growing relationship with my friends (I had friends then) and my need to preserve a safely impenetrable sense of self.
And says, ‘How does it feel to be such a freak’/and you say ‘Impossible’/as he hands you a bone — Bob Dylan, Ballad of a Thin Man
I think I’m probably the most introverted person I know. In primary school, I didn’t participate in PE lessons because of my eye (something that changed in secondary school, although my participation rendered me no less inept), and I spent them inventing awesome adventures for myself in which I was Firen and my best friend (I didn’t have one then) was Freeze. And then I started writing some stupid fantasy novel and made it into a cool Fighting Fantasy-esque CYOA game in which I made my friends (I had a few; turns out I was always adorable and charming) go on adventures with me. Perhaps because they too were subconsciously disillusioned by the world, they were always (I say this with pride and insistent self-validation) happy to come along for the ride. I was particularly proud of myself because a boy named Kah Khang, who was decidedly an outsider in his all-out geekiness and his tendency to cry if he didn’t get above 90 marks for a test, was part of this game and he felt happy for being included. He even wrote an essay entitled “My Best Friends” in which I was one of three main characters *smugness* But anyway the point is that I was always a person who had his head up in the clouds and who never really lived in the real world (woah Matrix reference? SO DEEP), probably because I had never really felt accepted. It’s not like I was always ostracized or anything, I’m too awesome for that, but at the same time it’s like there was no one else to discuss Charmed with or to share books with (I know this sounds zestfully euphemistic but I was fucking 12, so stop).
Do I have to scream in your face/I’ve been dodging lamps and vegetables — of Montreal, The Past Is A Grotesque Animal
And because I so desired to be accepted, I thought interests were instruments of community more than anything else, and thus I was more than willing to compromise on my interests (I only read my Charmed books outside of school, lols jk I was parading around with them by the armfuls. But srsly) because I didn’t see myself as an individual if I were not part of a community. And I think this, ultimately, is why the indie world appealed so much to me. It represents a world where people are decidedly different (“alternative” is the inescapable word in indie culture: alternative rock, alternative rap, alternative jazz, alternative neo-soul-folk-hop-electro-bash-what-hiiiiiiiyi) from the average, boring person, and are allowed to ‘belong’ solely because of that incredibly general difference. It’s a very embracing, accepting culture, and I think it’s also a very non-judgmental one. I’m ignoring hipster culture here, but then again there wasn’t really a hipster culture then anyway.
I’ve been looking for something else/duel it, duel it, duel it, juggle it, duel it, duel it — Phoenix, Lisztomania
And in Sec 4, I was feeling more at home with the people around me than I had ever felt in my entire life. The table. The gang. The BFFs. I had like a routine and a default group of friends I actually liked. And it was then that indie culture revealed itself to be something else entirely. It was an excuse for impenetrability, an exercise in reflexive self-defense. Turns out, the more the relationships with the people around me grew, the more I didn’t want to be understood, the more I shunned relatability, maybe because I wasn’t used to it, maybe because I hated myself and I thought if people knew what kind of a person I was they wouldn’t be as accepting or as nice even. I don’t really know still. I remember liking Half Nelson and Little Miss Sunshine before I really even knew why. I was just supposed to like it, so I claimed I did — not wholly untruthfully, in my defense — and over time I really did, maybe because my act was so convincing I inevitably too became convinced, maybe simply because they were such good movies (they really are — even if Half Nelson has a predictable plot and Little Miss Sunshine is occasionally bogged down by its caricature-y characters that Sundance so adores *smugness*) that they encourage instinctive rather than reasoned love, maybe because with a rich (albeit superficial) social identity I thought I could deflect the attention away from my perceived monstrosity and onto something that was far more interesting and engrossing. Regardless, I became increasingly fixated with the indie art scene, and at one point obsessed over digital surrealist art simply because it was colourful and different and begged inclusion into my numerous claims of individuality. And so the Kevin of 2010 was born, complete with a witty, interesting, insistently strange persona that was much too happy with his own creation to consider self-reflection or self-awareness. During the trip to the US for Operation Mozzie, for example, at one point I played Taylor Swift songs from my phone and disengaged myself from communal conversation — which, in regrettable retrospect, is something I did quite a lot — and proclaimed my antisocial tendencies insuperable. I think that was just another instance of staying true to the ‘insistently strange’ part. In truth, I don’t think there’s much to me at all. I overanalyze everything, I make mistakes, sometimes I make people laugh and sometimes I don’t, I like being intellectual even if my intelligence possibly abnegates that right — but that’s the kind of stuff everyone too experiences. There’s nothing particularly special about my experience, and I think I’m okay with that.
I feel like an artist/who’s lost his touch/who likes himself in his art/but not his art too much — Darren Criss, Human
And in J1, I was involved in Dramafeste and the Mid-year production, and for some ridiculous reason, I thought I had crossed the threshold from acceptance to celebration, when there was, in all frankness, very little to celebrate. So I can I say a few lines; I do that everyday. Everyone does that everyday. I don’t mean this in a self-deprecating pseudo-humble way, I’m not that noble. I just mean, what’s the point of having so many happy people around you that you don’t really know but hug anyway because apparently you give hugs when they don’t even matter and you’ve very carelessly handled the relationships that do? I really don’t want to sound like some fucking self-important teenager who knows nothing yet who necessarily has the trite epiphany: WHAT’S THE POINT OF DOING ALL THAT, IF I DON’T EVEN HAVE THE ‘THINGS THAT MATTER’ *temper tantrum*, because I’ve always been very fortunate in that nearly everything that mattered or that I needed, I had presented to me, what I never had and still don’t is the wisdom to act on this glorious privilege. In primary school, I had my fucking game. In secondary school, I had Melvin and Bradley and the table gang. In JC, I had acceptance and good friends, and at the end I even got acceptable grades, considering a lot of things that happened, that got me into UCLA, which I’m learning quickly is the home to a lot of awesome, weird people I think I would really love to be around — on top of its academic prestige and all that bullshit. I think the problem is inarguably and undoubtedly me, and I say this with self-knowing certainty and frankness, and not with self-pity. I think the only way I can approach relationships is with reciprocation, because it so clearly defines the boundaries in which a relationship functions. If you don’t wanna talk to me, I would convince myself that I too do not want your conversation. If you ask me to take time out to meet you, and then you spend most of your time with other friends you claim aren’t as important, I wouldn’t know how to deal with it, and I wouldn’t understand the terms of the relationship anymore, because, I guess, I don’t really work that way.
I’m not trying to forget you/I just like to be alone — Panda Bear, Bros
Being an introvert means that one is really careful with who one chooses to be close with, and with any sign of destabilization or potential emotional conflict one instinctively is made to retreat, because once the emotional attachment is made, it can’t be broken — for better or worse. I don’t know whether it’s something I can change, and I might if I had like a manual or something, but then again I don’t really know whether I want to. I’ve always been baffled by how some people smother their inner emotional conflicts so brazenly and so recklessly on other people in Facebook posts or in blog posts or on Twitter feeds (another reason why I’m against blog culture, btw), like don’t you want to save a little for yourself? If you’re sharing everything with everybody, how can you even differentiate between a friend and a close friend or whatever? It just doesn’t make sense. But I guess maybe I see it as a negative thing not because it doesn’t make sense, but because maybe I wish I had that kind of openness. Even in this post, in which I think I am inarguably being the most transparent I have ever been, there is so much that I could say, but that I want to preserve, to keep for myself and for, maybe, people that matter, because the things not shared are special, and besides, isn’t it just kind of vulgar to just release everything special and personal to the world? Even if not for the desire to honor that untouched, unjudged specialness, I don’t know if I even could. I mean, is it even possible to distill one’s frustrations into words, even if with the enthusiastic assistance of sociological terminology or psychoanalytical categories, without them losing their fundamental meanings — without which they would ineluctably be rendered hollow and limp and meaningless? I don’t think so, and besides, even if one could, one would only be adding unnecessary burden, to oneself because articulation necessitates an almost brutal self-confrontation, and to the people around one because confessions necessitate empathy — at least in the human ones. And for those reasons, I really do prefer reticence, and I don’t really see why anyone who respects the people around them enough to not smother them with their decidedly sadistic personalities wouldn’t either. Sometimes, I think it’s asking a little too much to want a listening ear (unless, of course, the other party is willing; but I’m referring specifically here to broadcast culture, in which the pseudo-torments of the pseudo-tortured are aimlessly pontificated in a masturbatory stab at self-consolation). There’s enough pain in everyone’s life as it is. Besides, there is so much more sincerity and power and beauty in wordless, mutual understanding, with sympathy communicable only by humanity and gentleness and kindness (I’m kind of paraphrasing Charlie Chaplin at the end lols; I expect an award for my authoritative command of unoriginality). Words are much too deceiving and too easily manipulable to mean anything anymore.
I wear a coat of feelings and they are loud/I’ve been having good days — Animal Collective, The Purple Bottle
Maybe, as numerous Facebook quizzes have smugly declared, I’m a romantic — and it’s not like I’m not particularly proud of this; it’s just a fact. I most certainly am not one of those half-wits who are like I’M A ROMANTIC SO LIKE I LIKE CUDDLING AND LIKE REALLY CHEESY POP SONGS GIGGLE GIGGLE. Btw what the fuck is up with Jason Mraz’s new single? I love Jason Mraz, and I 4shiz balked at its supreme, unadulterated shittiness. Anyway. I just mean that, I guess because I function most comfortably within my internal world, and it is so hard for me to allow people to be part of it, I naturally only expect like one or maybe two people to really understand me in my entirety, not that I’m particularly complex but I think my efforts to be impenetrable have definitely (albeit, perhaps, unfortunately) paid off, and it takes explanation from the source to really get anywhere close.
Fuck gold/I’m a platinum digger — M.I.A., 10 Dollar
And here’s where I want to talk about my internal world. Even within the indie world, I have come to learn, there are various echelons of indie-ness. There are the Little Miss Sunshine/She&Him indie pop necessities, artists and things that one knows simply to validate one’s indie-ness, and then there are the Alain Resnais/The Music Tapes-ish kind of all-out opacity, things that you know because you’re either really, really passionate about the arts, you’d like to think yourself as one like so, or perhaps just because like David Bowie you’re so consumed by your dedication to your strangeness and unfathomability (be them real or imagined) that you instinctively possess knowledge of things so esoteric that film professors and experimental indie musicians pause to consider their own artistic credibility in your presence (I am proud to declare that my taste in movies has left a film major speechless with ignorance. SCORE). I, obviously, am of the latter kind, because I think the world has become so transparent (and blog culture is definitely a testament to that) that I feel the need to construct a safe place, an impenetrable place where I can explore and feel unjudged, a place empty of unqualified opinions that invariably possess the power to destabilize regardless of validity or credibility.
I’m in love all ri-i-i-ight/with my crazy beautiful life/with the parties/the disasters/with my friends all pretty and plastered — Ke$ha, Crazy Beautiful Life
I think the progression that indie culture has made today is particularly interesting, one that I would never have expected. Foster the People, for example, have taken (OMG BRITISH PLURALIZATION OF THE GROUP WHAT) the pop charts by storm with their single Pumped Up Kicks, and the current #1 single right now is an indie pop collaboration between .fun and Janelle Monae. It’s pretty awesome, yeah, but ridiculous at the same time. Both songs are catchy (although I don’t think either are particularly memorable, but that’s just me, apparently), but they don’t really sound anything like Kelly Clarkson or Taylor Swift or Demi Lovato or any artist with Dr Luke productions and unabashedly formulaic songwriting. At the same time, Pitchfork, smug, perennial publicist of obscure, experimental indie bands since the dawn of Internet journalism, is writing reviews for the likes of Rihanna, Beyonce and Lauryn Hill, and praising them for their ingenuity. Even Drake gets away with experimental sampling and minimalist downtempo electronic productions and still manages to constantly stay on the top of the charts. Indie and mainstream cultures are gently, gradually colliding (for lack of a more unoriginal word), and soon quirky, strange indie pop outfits will be ubiquitous. I guess I kind of appreciate how people are becoming more open-minded towards different sounds (again, even if the sounds aren’t particularly good; I don’t really understand Foster the People at all) but at the same time this conflation is undermining the regolith on which indie culture stands. When indie pop outfits become mainstream pop outfits, where will those who favor impenetrability but who instinctively and helplessly repudiate the exponential strangeness concomitant with the more opaque depths of the indie world go? Or maybe that’s why hipster culture is pivotal to indie culture; in a time where the safety and smallness of the indie community is being threatened, one can defend oneself with irony: Oh but like my love for Foster the People, even after they WENT MAINSTREAM is like, ironic. Then again I really don’t want the indie world to be entirely relegated to the hipster world, which to me is the pinnacle of inauthenticity — but then again I have spent much of this post proclaiming my inauthenticity, so I’ll just shut my pie-hole. And my mouth.
I can’t do what ten people tell me to do/so I guess I’ll just remain the same — Otis Redding, Sittin’ On The Dock Of The Bay
So I guess I’m not authentic, and my interests are probably the walls of my safe haven, but really, is anyone respectable authentic? Isn’t inauthenticity the price to pay for self-awareness? In knowing how you are viewed, everything you do naturally feels like a modification not of the essential self, but of the perception of the self; the self is untouched, or if it is we wouldn’t really know, would we? Sure, people too obnoxious for self-reflection or too nescient to understand the meaning of ‘nescient’ (you know who you are, fuckers) might be the only authentic ones here, but who really wants to hang out with them anyway? Or even if they are, I don’t really know how that affects anything. If you’re an asshole, you’re an asshole, and I will stay the fuck away, regardless of whether or not you are authentically or inauthentically one. Maybe the only thing that is authentic about anyone is their comfort with their identity; if you’re comfortable with being a pretentious, pseudo-intellectual prick (why, honey, I most certainly am) then you’re probably really interesting. If you’re comfortable with being profanely boring, you’re probably a really chill person and we should be best friends. I guess what I’m trying to say is that the indie fixation with authenticity (M.I.A. and Lana Del Rey, among others, have been victim of this pointless obsession) is painfully stupid, and M.I.A., as she does with nearly everything else, should attack it in true iconoclastic spirit.
Why’s it so hard to tell you what I want/why can’t you just read my mind — Alanis Morissette, These R The Thoughts
A lot of the time I feel like there is so much I don’t know. I mean, I’m working towards political awareness and proficiency in Spanish, and I try to be understanding and good, and often I don’t succeed, and I can’t even point out funny-sounding cities on a map and I don’t know how to deal with (and god — without the capital G, mind you, Kevin The Subtle Iconoclast at work here — willing, love) people without hurting them in the process. I don’t know how to convey my feelings on a daily basis, and it just seems so much easier to release them in dramatic paroxysms of tears and snot…except it’s unnecessarily hurtful, and I really do try my best to avoid drama; my weekly dosage of Breaking Bad has plenty of that already. I really want to be happy, not in general because that’s a myth created by religion in a self-justifying circulus in probando to bolster the beams of conformity, but like with myself. I don’t want to be self-conscious all the time. I want to be around people whom I think are the shit and who too think that I am the shit. And I don’t want to write a fucking 4000-word essay everytime I want to convey my opinions, because whatever this post would have you believe about Kevin The Sympathetic Person Underneath The Persona, often he just can’t muster the strength nor the energy to seek the very things he so claims he wants. Maybe ambivalence is his territory. At least that’s indie enough for him *smirks*
If you wasn’t so ugly/I’d put my dick in your face/dick in your face/PUT MY DICK IN YOUR FACEEEEEEE — Nicki Minaj, Come On A Cone
therein, Therin. 