A Hard Day’s Travels…
I’m not sure what I want to write yet – I have a half-formed idea in my brain that is centered around the jumble of emotions I’m feeling. Usually, when I feel like this, I just become subdued and try to withdraw within myself so I don’t lash out at other people. At these times, I want to tell every person who aggravates me EXACTLY what is wrong with them, what I think of them, and rant at them until my anger leaves me.
I’m not sure why I’m angry, though.
These moods usually start when I happen to come across something on one of my social news feeds that strikes me the wrong way. Today, I was sifting through sounds folks I’m connected to had posted on my soundcloud page. I tend to just play the first sound, minimize the browser and let the interesting set of music play while I work.
But, today, there were a few things that upset me. First, I heard some derogatory lyrics in a pulsating type of music whose bass disturbed me and made me feel slightly nauseous. I brought up the browser window, changed the music, unfollowed that user, and proceeded to relax while listening to a different new song that was pleasant. Again working, I listened with pleasure to a few new songs from fellow humans.
Then, up popped an ‘excerpt’ track from some band who was trying a “teaser” approach to promoting their new album. The track consisted of a very predictably contrived layering of people singing wordlessly and several males speaking in pseudo-intellectual terms about “their style”. And, it pissed me off.
Like, rampaging and roaring and throwing tables pissed off.
(ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻
It angered me because I could very visibly imagine those guys, dressed like every other person with the same tastes, using the same words as every other person with the same tastes, honestly believing they have a “unique, eclectic sound” – AND PEOPLE BELIEVE IT. Those guys are sitting pretty somewhere, going from the privileged lives of their birth to the privileged lives of their adulthood, and they truly believe they are special and deserve to be lauded for their completely unoriginal version of a subset of completely unoriginal popular music that is currently crowding the airwaves.
I realize the irrational nature of my response, but it makes me angry because these people get everything they want, no matter how crappy they actually are. It’s unfair and not even disguised as false humility or lack of pretense… Instead, it’s CELEBRATED. It makes me angry because there are so many people that sop up this rubbish like sponges because they are told to.
Obviously, this is nothing new. We all know that people are pack animals, feel safe with the hive mentality, etc. But, it still acutely affects me when I recognize that IN THIS VERY MOMENT, those people are “successful” because of their unoriginal claims of originality presented in blatantly stereotypical terms to the fervently hungry masses. It’s not so much the idea that ‘everyone would be identical to one another if they could’ that bothers me… it’s the part where NOBODY HAS A PROBLEM WITH THIS.
Where has this complacency and wish to be so uniform that one’s idea of “unique” means wearing the exact same stripes in a slightly different direction?
It bothers me, a lot.
It’s like a bad joke that I can’t get away from.
I find that these feelings are only exacerbated by reading on the internet, because this attitude is so pervasive. All of the artists posting ugly paintings, the philosophers posting quotes they can’t explain, photographers posting blurry images of people’s hair, the poets posting their coffees, the musicians posting non-music to promote almost-music… It overwhelms me sometimes.
I’m overwhelmed.
I need to get away from these people, but they are everywhere.
I feel like I’m trapped with these people, that I’ll never be able to escape them when I look around and see them everywhere.
But, I CAN escape them. I can escape them by not being caught in the trap of their idea of perfection. I can escape them by noticing the world as it is, not as I’ve been told it should be. I can escape them by turning up the volume on my preferred music and by abstaining from viewing their preferred postings. I can escape by recognizing that the world need not be presented in the materialistic terms these people would have it be.
It gets difficult, though.
And so, I’m traveling through the day trying to keep my mind out of anger, my eyes out of glaring, my ears out of hearing, and my money out of their sizable bank accounts.
Maybe some day soon I’ll have saved enough money from their pockets to maintain a mountain haven of recluse for myself.
A freak can dream, eh?