It may not come as a surprise to you that from an early age, I was always the class clown. Among my earliest memories are calls to my parents from teachers and administrators concerning truly abominable incidents such as pretending to smoke a Twizzler like a cigarette, saying that the air around my friend John was "too farty" and claiming that I actually liked the timeout desk better than my own desk. While my great goofs evolved over time, making people laugh and providing breaks from everyday routine became a way of life for me.
It was also around the age of these heinous crimes that I remember receiving my first-ever CD. I was with my Dad at a CD store and as he was checking out, the cashier said I should ask my dad to buy me "Dookie" by Green Day. I did, he did, and whatever "punk" really is found a permanent niche in my life.
No matter how you regard that album today - I, for one, still believe it to be a masterpiece - or how "punk" you consider it, being an eight-year old in the suburbs at a private school with a Boombox and "Dookie" felt extremely badass. I showed it to all of my unamused friends and smiled when they said swear words. It was pretty much the only CD that I listened to for two straight years. I didn't know how to use the internet and for some reason thought that Green Day had broken up, and so when I used to listen to that album, I'd dream about getting all of the band members into a room, playing "Dookie" to remind them how amazing they once were and getting them back together. This was, of course, going to be in addition to my career as the world's first athlete to be an all-star in both the MLB and the NHL. Green Day never actually broke up, and I never even made my high school baseball team. But I digress.
I've been thinking about my roots in punk and class clowning recently as I watched a video in which various artists are asked the simple question of "What is punk?" Brendan Kelly's answer at 1:52 is, for my money, the best there is. I don't claim to be an authority on punk by any means, but I can often be found in mosh pits at punk music festivals and small, dark, hole-in-the-wall bars all the same. I think that I've developed a unique perspective on punk music as someone who has never really looked the part.
Now, before I go into it, let's establish that the notion of trying to "look the part" is something that, to me, is extremely not punk. Just as I was the class clown who did nothing but goof off and then turn around and get straight A's, I was my family and friends' resident punk who then turned around and played Chopin on the piano. What I truly saw as beautiful in punk and, later to a lesser extent heavy metal, was a universal rejection of expectations and any notion of how things are "supposed to be." It's what allowed this bipolar contradiction that I was growing up as to truly develop. As you might have guessed by the title of this post, my premise here is that punk music is a widespread manifestation of existentialism in modern culture. That might not be a terribly original take, but I think that my perspective can lend itself to some extensions of this thought.
To briefly summarize the connection, at the core of existentialism is a seemingly simple concept that says things don't have to be the way they are. The founder of existentialism, Jean-Paul Sartre called living with the idea that things had a necessary order living in "bad faith." This idea may seem simple, but understand that ultimately it suggests that all of our routines and labels such as dinner and work are nothing more than a mirage of order; and it's wrong to accept them as any more valid than their alternatives. That is to say that if I believed it best to eat chicken off the floor upon waking and eggs off of my pillow before sleeping, it is just as valid as the belief that eggs should be eaten for breakfast, chicken for dinner and all of the food eaten off a plate. Assuming that breakfast, lunch and dinner are the appropriate meals simply because that is what you have been told is living in bad faith.
The roots of punk music arose from many factors including unrest, anger, rejection, drugs, adrenaline and the like. But why would punk then find such a natural place in the life of an eight-year old class clown in the suburbs of a midwestern town who is not angry, nor rejected, nor unhappy? The answer, in my eyes, is that punk embraces existentialism like no other genre, and while at the time I didn't know what that was or how to define it, it's a philosophy that I've known since my earliest memories. At the heart of it, punk isn't entirely about rejecting the way things are, so much as it is about rejecting the idea that things HAVE to be the way they are. An individual doesn't wear a mohawk because he hates a normal haircut, he wears a mohawk because his peers believe that he MUST have a normal haircut. Both fans of punk and existentialists fight against the idea that any one haircut or way of thinking is more valid or worthy than the next. It's also fair to acknowledge that there is a token of spite to it. A "look, I've done the opposite of what you claimed to be necessary and here we are still standing" attitude in the face of being told what to do.
As a happy, go-lucky class clown, this is what drove me. Making people laugh was about doing the unexpected and seeing things in a new perspective. I wasn't "supposed" to fall out of my chair, but I knew there was nothing actually stopping me from doing it, and it made people laugh. Nothing irked me more than the notion that because I didn't sit with perfect posture or have nice handwriting or keep quiet and obey instructions that I must not be smart or successful. I made a point to get perfect marks while acting like someone who an observer would assume to be an idiot. The assumption that to be the top of your class, you have to act a certain way and behave a certain way, while I didn't really know at the time, is what I was fighting against.
And that's what punk, to me at least, is. There's an incredible camaraderie that comes by merely being at a punk or heavy metal show. I can show up wearing a suit, a moto jacket, a dress, sweats or any other clothing that exists because everyone at the show believes that no look or clothing is any more right than the next. By simply being there, everyone has a collective understanding that music doesn't have to be a specific sound or structure, decorum doesn't have to have a specific standard, and people don't have to look or behave a specific way. It's why I can continue having no particular interest in getting a nose ring myself but find everyone else's to be indescribably badass. In some cultures, piercings are beautiful, yet in the equally valid western culture, they're considered edgy. Punks and existentialists both have this contradiction in the top of their minds.
Which leads me full circle to the idea of self-importance and the seemingly bipolar existence I maintain. In general, the activities that I find myself enjoying the most are at one extreme end of the spectrum or the other. When it comes to bars, I prefer to drink at either a ritzy, dim lounge where suits and ties mingle; or a gritty, cheap, local watering hole where the only thing standing out more than voices loudly telling stories are the tacky neon signs.
What I believe to be an extension of this preference is the idea of self-importance. As a human being and as a creative professional, affirmation and being made to feel valuable is among the best feelings there are. To be waited on, enjoying the finer things in life while believing that you deserve them and have earned them is invigorating and exhilarating. It boosts a feeling of self-importance that is essential to success. In short, it's the feeling of "I'm the shit" that gets me.
In contrast, dive bars, punk shows and the like awaken an equally powerful yet completely opposite emotion - that is, "I'm not shit." It's difficult to explain, but it feels just as good. It's a reminder that no matter what you're wearing, what you do for a living, what your past is or what your future is, value is relative and in the grandest scheme of things we are all equals in this universe with the same ending. It's frustrating to me to hear someone from a high-class bar make assumptions or talk down about those in low-class bars, as much as it's frustrating to here those in low-class bars make assumptions and talk down about those in high-class bars. Partially because all of us have worth, and partially because in either circumstance, they're speaking ill of a major part of me.
Simultaneously living with the belief that I'm important yet entirely unimportant is part of what makes me who I am. It's what makes me, by my definition, punk. It's what makes me, by my definition, successful and hard-working. It's what helps me to constantly see everything around me from new perspectives and maintain genuine and valuable relationships with people from all walks of life. As a creative professional, it's what keeps me balanced and in tune with what those around me are thinking and feeling. And once you get that, you suddenly get punk music.