TLWFY - essay on bullshit # 4

I watched this magnificent movie called the hairdresser’s husband. It’s about a man who likes to dance, smoke cigarettes and beautiful women who cut hairs. He just lives and one day finds the one. From then on they are happy. This movie was about nothing but being happy and dancing while you don’t give a damn about what others might think of your moves and drinking perfumes to get drunk in a storm. I wouldn’t call this movie true but nor do i call über-realistic just screaming on the edge of sanity, breaking glasses and drinking hard liquor all the time plots. Somehow we became these terrible people. We feel bad a lot and when we could get our minds off we still just move on and continue to witness even more horrible things than what our lives are. Because we’re obsessed with not being scammed.
That’s why i loved the hairdresser’s husband. Finally i didn’t have to care about keeping this image of not carrying. It was much better than to take lsd and have a bad trip so i can say it added to my character and i saw another part of the reality. Somehow we look on drugs as the real deal of life while they just as fake as movies. The only difference between drugs and fake, well let’s call them cultural objects is that drugs always work. While with something not as effective to get under it’s influence it needs us. As much as we need it. I only call things shit what i don’t need. And i terribly needed the hairdresser’s husband. It was the magic, the fun, the complete difference of what i experience or call true while i believed every minute of it. Proudly. It was magical. So i kept thinking. Why are we always embarrassed to tell we really like something even if no one suffered? Where no big shit happens. Just for the simple fact that we like it. Because it was fun. I look on punk pretty much like this. Sure i’d have some offensive, suspicious and always questioning everything side of myself if nothing shitty were ever happened to me but i like all my frustration to pass if there’s no big real reason to be in spite of anything. I’m angry cause this piece of shit world doesn’t let me love what i want harmlessly. I don’t really understand people when they say punk is not just fun. Or not fun at all. Even when it comes to do something which would live up many hours of my time or needs me in the way that i will be exhausted and tired i still do all of it cause it’s fun. Otherwise it would be a duty which is non-sense if i’m here by choice. I won’t do anything because i have to by a rule. Even when i let some unknown bands crash on my floor i did it cause i thought it would be fun. And when someone writes me a letter, asks me in person or calls me up for asking for anything i’ll answer it cause it feels good sometimes to help. If not instantly but in the bigger picture. I just love the pure pleasure of enjoying things without telling myself „oh i did this, i should be proud of myself for that”. I never was into hard work or sweating for nothing but for the questionable dignity of the aforementioned „yes i’ve done that”. Fuck that. Even when we are raising important questions and want to solve them we’re doing it because we want this.
It used to be hard. At the beginning you had to die, then at least got many killed by your ideas. You had to suffer, be creative. Then like not doing something was fair enough. I don’t eat in mcdonalds, I’m fighting capitalism. Now you should just blame and shit on everyone who does something and you’re ok. Heroism is much more affordable as heads are getting filled with hatred and disgust. Everyone always throw words like radical, creative, original. Which might be a goal for me as well but on the journey which leads to the end point I’ll produce other things which might not fit the three big adjectives but I’m gonna like them anyways. It’s one key of the whole thing. If you always just care about what’s new and never been done before you might miss what you like. Cause trying to do new things is only what you really like if there’s nothing you could like now. Otherwise it’s not the product what you’re interested in but in the social status that you’ll gain by inventing something new. Even with my new band which I couldn’t really put in any genre so I call it psychedelic oi but mostly we sound like early meat puppets minus the country bullshit changed to joy division and Ramones, as you see I can describe it with many bands who not just already wrote many songs but most of them broke up before I was even born. Does it bother me? No it isn’t. I can say that the modern world is not inventing new things by creating whole unique and new stuff but with putting some already existing things together to form a new aspect. As words, and notes are finite being original or creative is born before everyone. I stopped reading a year ago when I’ve realized most of the things I know I know from someone who wrote his ideas down and I’ve read them. So I rather think on my own and what I experienced is lots of times I see my ideas back from someone else. Which makes me a sad at first cause I lost the game. I’m reading back my ideas from her/him not the other way around. But then I’m kinda happy that I’m as smart as a man who’s been published. Maybe I should go back to reading. Especially when literature doesn’t interest me as much as music does. And as I pointed out I always played in some already existing genre. Sadly only movies can do what I really love. When a movie doesn’t have a classical plot, things are just happening or not and the movie is still great. For me in music it happens when I hear something that sounds amazingly new or true even if I know it’s not. I call it the ramones effect. Ramones wrote the most primitive songs with lyrics what hardly made any sense at all but they sound like the best songs in the world. And it’s almost impossible to reproduce a ramones song. So everyone who believes in his or her idea doesn’t matter how original, radical or unique it is and does it with enthusiasm it will surely sound, look, read great. For me that’s punk’s best benefit. I remember when I saw a footage of a YDI show in the american hardcore documentary. The singer went on stage and exploded. He moved like a maniac and there wasn’t a slight hint of any pre-thought motion. He did what he wanted on the stage. He wanted to put himself out and he did it without carrying a bit. That’s what disappointing in a way when I see a band being shy or afraid of the crowd’s reaction. I’m sad when I spy the lack of need to do what one thinks is fun. I just love the music and of course the ideas too. I’ve witnessed on myself that with getting out of school I’m not only interested in girls and not seeing a future but seeing what’s going on in the present. So I had an epiphany this summer during a tour. I was left alone in berlin’s own Köpi. It was raining my cloths were wet. I lost an austrian anarchist girl as a conversation partner to a german squatter. I toke a dump in the info center’s toilet where the sink was full with vomit. But on my way from the toilet to a shelter where my warm beer was waiting I realized where I am, how did I get here and what do I do. I had the time of my life. I was in berlin on a tour with my best friends. On a trip I booked solely. I didn’t know what day it was and I knew if anyone who’s not into this as deep as we are, they wouldn’t understand why I enjoy this. But I loved that. Not the fact of being unique in a different way but the secret I had which was why I’m having fun. I’m not punk all the time. In the meaning of sometimes I don’t force my punkness to x-ray everything’s legit status for my standards. I’m more likely let it work instinctively. Cause setting up and following rules is so easy. Especially if it works only with hatred. I hate this, I hate that, everything sucks. That’s a really sad way to live a life. Punk has this tendency to retain youth in ourselves. Which sometimes is the first element of a personality people tend to dump. And it’s sad. Kids usually just care about things they like and they like it because they think it’s good. And cause there’s no objective definition of something good other than it can’t be progressive rock or jazz it’s totally their liberate choice.
When I said I’m not punk all the time I meant I don’t always suspect some major conspiracy behind things what not just I but also maybe my mother would like. Listenable music is not always evil. And because it’s listenable of course more money will be in it. But I’m not listening to it because I take it serious other than I take serious my taste and the connection between that and their music. If it fits I have no problem with this. Maybe it’s my less true, spoiled or still childish side of myself. But I’m fine with it. Cause I still have my ultimate hunger for new, interesting or simply just good punk music. And music in general. But I’m a punk so I have my heart there. The thing is, it’s fun for me to keep my enthusiasm not as hard work. It’s not hard for me to deny parts of society, and capitalist culture what I don’t like. I like to have epiphanies after flushing my shit in squats and avoid most of the consumer society. Nothing is really hard and painful when you love to do it.