Abraham vs. the (Mainstream) World
Am I searching for hidden depths and meaning at the shallow end of the pool?
Ever since I was a youngster, Saturday mornings have meant one thing: house cleaning. I don’t particularly like doing it but it’s been drilled into me and now it’s habit. One such chore is hanging out the washing. Every Saturday morning without fail I’m in the backyard hanging out washing.
For the past couple months, for no real reason, I’ve been listening to the eponymous closing track on Converge’s magnum opus Jane Doe as I’m putting the washing out. The same day, doing the same thing listening to the same song. This morning, as I was hanging towels while simultaneously banging my head and miming the lyrics to “Jane Doe,” it dawned on me just how demented I would look to the neighbours; here’s a seemingly normal person performing a terribly mundane chore whilst head banging, fist pumping and generally acting like a fool as he listens to weird music.
This chance meeting between ordinary and extraordinary got me thinking about other strange encounters, like last week when some young teenager came up to me and told me how awesome my Have Heart t-shirt looked, or going back even further to when I was working as a check out chick and a customer in his late thirties came through with a Black Flag tattoo on his forearm. I practically gushed over him as I said how rad it was. And what about subtle pop culture references? I nearly wet myself when I saw a Mars Volta poster in the college dorm of Veronica Mars. I nodded knowingly when James Franco had a nervous breakdown listening to “Rise Above” on Freaks and Geeks. Heck, I even got a buzz when Moby, who’s a total knob head ever since he claimed he was once a member of Flipper, wore a Bad Brains tee on 30 Rock.
For a long time I’ve had no interest in what the mainstream has to offer and this will never change, yet subconsciously some part of me still seeks mainstream validation that my tastes are “cool.”
It’s a strange sensation. Am I happy to forever be the outsider or do I yearn to be accepted back into the fold? The thought of becoming like everyone else horrifies me but I can’t deny the buzz I feel when the mainstream deigns to acknowledge my little corner of the world. Maybe it’s just the thrill of getting a joke that 99% of the audience is too ignorant to understand?
Ironically, though I seek some kind of validation from the mainstream, I become savage when I see the mainstream butcher or misappropriate one of my sacred cows. I was horrified when EA chose to include Rage Against the Machine’s “Testify” on their soundtrack for Madden 10 only after they’d completely stripped the song of its incendiary political message. Don’t even get me started on mall punks that hang out in chump stores like Dangerfield. The list is virtually endless.
It’s a perverse relationship. Like a defiant teenager that’s left home to strike out on his own but who still needs to return home every weekend to drop off his dirty clothes and score a free meal. The nurse strings are cut but not completely severed. I want to be seen as different but not ostracised from everything. Am I too scared not to completely cut myself free once and for all from the mainstream? Am I so insecure in myself that I can’t help care what others think of my tastes that I still need the occasional boost from Hollywood?
Maybe I’m over analysing the whole thing way too much. Am I searching for hidden depths and meaning at the shallow end of the pool? I’m certain the next time one of my bands gets name-dropped in a movie or TV show, I’ll still chuckle with that knowing smirk and I’m sure I won’t be the only one. In fact in the time it took me to write this article, I went and saw the excellent Scott Pilgrim vs the World and as someone who’s been in the hardcore scene for years, by far the best moment in that film was when the tyrannical Vegan Edge Police swarmed onto the scene. On a side note, as someone who doesn’t really drink, can I just say how pretentious and smug many Straight Edgers are? If you’ve spent any time in hardcore, you’ll know this to be true. In any case, I’ll continue hanging out the washing every Saturday morning in my singlet and boxers as I listen to Converge, happily oblivious to the strange looks coming my way.