I did think
about doing something Thanksgiving-themed. I also thought about doing something
anti-Thanksgiving. When my post about my father ended up landing on Father’s
Day, I had some hesitation, but somehow, maybe it was the “baddad” hash tag, it
ended up getting more hits than usual. For every holiday that is generally
liked and feels good for most people, there are people for whom it is awful,
and I sympathize with that, and I don’t mind providing an outlet and some
sympathy.
I can’t really
rage against Thanksgiving though. First of all, I think it is one of the best
things about us that we have a holiday that is about gratitude. Yes, people
give at Christmas, but they also get, and it can get really out of hand. That
shopping keeps encroaching on Thanksgiving, and knowing that in addition to the
greed that drives it, some of its success is people longing to escape their
horrible families, makes me sad.
Also, I can see how the Native American Day of Mourning
thing can put a damper on it. However, that is not a reason to go against
Thanksgiving; that is a reason to work towards improving the plight of Native
Americans now. That’s a complex issue, too, but I am about to start my Native
American Heritage month reading (and yes, I will be getting a late start, but
what’s new?), and one thing I will be specifically looking for is what can be
done now.
So, moving past all of that, gratitude is beautiful, and
makes you healthier and happier, and yes you should practice it all year long,
but taking some time to specially focus on it is something I value, and you
will not get an anti-Thanksgiving post here, but you are also not getting a
Thanksgiving post, except for these first few paragraphs. This post should
nonetheless prove to be very appropriate.
So, I have noticed that I am much more of a geek now than
I was before. Yes, this can largely be blamed on My Chemical Romance, because
it was Danger Days that got me envisioning a comic book, and that got me
reading other comic books, and that escalated everything. Also, I may have
gotten on Twitter for Grimm, but it has ended up being more of a music thing,
and that has led to it being largely a comic book thing as well.
This is not blame-throwing. First of all, the geek was
always there inside me. Also, when I started reading comics, I started with
Maus, and that was because I had always planned on reading it, and Persepolis,
and I had intended to read the Umbrella Academy even when all I knew of MCR was
“I’m Not Okay”. It may have gotten the ball rolling, but the ball and the
inclined plane were clearly already in place.
Also, there’s no blame, because that’s where a lot of
happiness comes from. This is going to be all over the map, but I there should
be a point in here somewhere by the time I’m done.
One thing that has had me thinking about it is that a lot
of musicians are clearly geeks. I remember watching the video for “High on You”
by Survivor, and realizing they were not cool at all, and it was not fair that
I still found them attractive merely because they were musicians. The passage
of time has shown me that this is true about many musicians. You listen to them
talk, or hear them laugh, and sure, they may talk about being socially
marginalized, but suddenly, you get it. They just seem cool now because they
rock.
It makes sense. Part of being a geek is that passion
where you can devote yourself to and lose yourself in something, which may be
exactly what it takes to master an instrument and composition and all of the
things that allow one to make beautiful music, and some sense of alienation
doesn’t necessarily hurt, from an inspiration point of view.
(And a lot of them are into comics and gaming—that’s not
just MCR.)
So, I had been thinking about that, but also I was
thinking about my own youth, for a few reasons. Some of that is Twitter, and
that I have ended up connecting with young music fans, and I will write more
about that later, but suddenly there are all these memories of what it was like
back then. Also, connecting with people from back then, I seem to have become
retroactively cool. This is from different sources, who did not realize how
cool I was then, or now realize that I was the coolest person there.
Well, I wasn’t—at least, not that way—but one thing that
I did have going for me, besides being able to be tough or crack wise when
needed, is that there was always so much going on that I missed out on a lot of
the social game entirely. I was reading books or making up stories or joining
clubs and learning things.
I had linked to an article a while back about how nerds
can’t be popular because they want other things more and popularity requires a
total effort. Well, it’s lengthy but I will link to it again:
Anyway, it’s just a much richer life when you are
passionate things. It is richer when you can get lost in music, or in art, or
in a book, and then find yourself through there as you are losing yourself. I
love listening to music, but I also love watching musician perform, and it is
because they are (usually) having a good time, and I respond to that.
So much of what being cool means when you are a teenager
is not caring and not being impressed and not being an open book. I was not
that person in high school, and I am even less that way now. Yes, sometimes I
am embarrassed by it. I do not know, between my sisters and I, how many times
we used “cute” and “awesome” while we were at Yellowstone Bear World. I knew we
were overusing the words, and that there are plenty of synonyms out there, and
I can be more articulate than that. In that moment though, everything was cute
and awesome and awesomely cute, and we were impressed and we were loving it.
I frustrate myself writing, but I enjoy myself too. The
other day I wanted to check something in the comic book, and in the process of
looking for it I got lost in it all over again. And I wrote it! I knew what was
going to happen and what they were going to say, but I still fell completely
into it.
I know the geek = joy equation is an oversimplification.
There are other paths to joy than geekdom, and there are impediments to geek
happiness, whether it is from the rejection of others or being too locked
inside yourself to relate to others well, or just being tortured by the
frustrations of your art. I don’t think you have to suffer more than anyone
else to be an artist, because there seems to be enough suffering to go around
for everyone.
I am glad that there are people who suffer who are able
to find relief by making something beautiful out of it. Mainly, though, I am
glad that it is such an amazingly beautiful interesting world, full of books
and songs and animals and tastes and kindred spirits. I am impressed by many
things. I am passionate about many things. And I am grateful all the time for
finding these things.
There is no coolness there; that’s a fire. And I’ll burn
both ends until my fire’s out.
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