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Oh my God, help me. I've turned emo.
What happened to me? I swore this wouldn't happen. I swore I wouldn't end up being trendy, hipstery, or emo. And I've kind of ended up being all three... well maybe not trendy so much. Except that it's sort of trendy to be emo. But I didn't 'become' emo to be trendy. I honestly don't know how this came about. Sure, I went through high school being a loser. All the high school losers are the ones who have transformed into the coolest, most successful cats around. And emo, because they get to cry and mope about their teenage years when they got shoved into lockers. Emo kids, who are still in high school, have realtime experiences to fill their poetry books with. I haven't gone that far though. No poetry.
It's so weird though. I saw, not long ago, a guy who I went to high school with. He was always a meek, 'geeky' kind of fellow, had a small circle of equally-off-the-cuff friends. He wasn't emo then though, because 'emo' didn't really exist at the time. He looks exactly the same now, except for one thing - the totally babe-a-licious supermodel hanging off his arm. Suddenly, being a scrawny, unkempt nerd is the grooviest thing on earth. The world's underdogs, spurned for life, are now in high demand. Everyone's going emo (or fauxmo or whatever). I'm sure the emo boys don't have a problem with all the gorgeous chicks (no matter how un-emo those chicks often are) throwing themselves at them, but... that's more ironic than the t-shirts they wear.
I reiterate - I swore I'd never be this way. I'd long ago discounted the whole thing as a brief phase of sadsack, wimpy, depressing, loathing, cynical, self-absorbed, superficial, hormonally-fluctuating, whiny boys and girls. Weenies, really. And fuck it all, I'm one of them. Not entirely, mind you. I don't 100% dress the part, and I do listen to other types of music than slow, experimental, spacey, melancholy alt-rock. I drink a lot of red wine, but I also drink beer. Sweaty, disgusting Molson beer. I don't keep a journal in my bag (aside from my notebook for writing about shows... and I do call them shows. Mark of the beast!), but in said notebook, I sat on the train and jotted down notes about this very article.
While I'm ranting, I may as well mention the Friendster/MySpace trends. I'm on both, but since they both royally fuck up my computer (why do these websites screw up Photoshop? Something's not right there...), I don't frequent them. What I've noticed more than anything is that it's another way to get ahold of people I already know how to get ahold of. It's also somewhere to go to scope out bad pictures of gorgeous people. Or people who think they're gorgeous. People who are alone (emo) who go there to find 'friends'. Hey, it's a computer. Yeah, you and your 563 friends. People looking pouty-lipped from under their browline, scantily clad, super-close-up, all with low-res digital cameras. Yeah everyone's beautiful in 72 dpi. I don't really do well at meeting people on those things, probably because I can't take myself seriously by cold-calling (messaging) someone I don't know based on how swoopy their haircut brushes over their face. Like I can keep a conversation going with someone I have virtually no connection to, other than perhaps a love of "Harold and Maude." I do see the merits in, say, if you have a band, getting instantaneous word out to a ton of people about shows and such. But that's not what people mostly go there for. Oh my goodness, people who are dating sit around and give "oh i love you <3 <3<3<3 forever darling!" mushy messages to one another on their testimonials section. 300 times a day. When they live on the same block as one another. "Oh, I miss you baby, you are so beautiful." Go outside and walk to his/her house! Maybe I'm just bitter. That makes me emo.
Slowly, the whole emo thing is chipping away at me. I love emo music. I love digging emo aspects out of non-emo music. Just look at my April CD reviews. It's uncanny. I derive some perverse pleasure from being totally self-deprecating, like maybe if enough people know that I find things wrong with myself, they'll either know that I'm not egotistical, or they'll take pity on me. Damn attention-grabbing.
The day I was told Death Cab For Cutie was emo, I simultaneously lost it, and decided to listen up to the whole culture. I'd always just liked Death Cab, and I never really gave it a thought about what genre they belonged to before that. All I knew was that they were in the 'punk' section of the record store, and that just seemed unfitting to me. Little did I know, a whole subgenre of punk was being formed right before my very eyes! I'd already passed emo off, but now... one of the most pleasant bands I'd heard in recent times was part of that whole world??? Well geez, maybe there would be something to it. So I listened, and I loved. I could be a real prick here and say that There's Something About Airplanes was the first album I owned. Yeah, all you pansy poseurs with your Transatlanticism can go to Hell. I was there first. See? Emo. I claimed a band. I'm totally emo. I just typed 'eno' by mistake there. See, I love Brian Eno too. I don't know if that would be considered emo. I guess it's très cool or something.
But I also dig the emo look. I almost caved a few weeks back and bought thick-frame glasses. I thought they looked neat. They were black and red. I need a new pair of glasses anyhow. It wasn't completely a fashion statement. It was actually quite practical. I might still go and get them. I love skate shoes and fun sneakers. I like whispy, forehead-covering haircuts and interesting dye jobs. And black hair. Even though I generally loathe pink, I like it when willowy emo boys wear pink and manage to pull it off effectively. I like those doe-eyed, fragile, sensitive boys. I think it awakens a mothering instinct in me or something. But I don't fit in! I'm just not there. I can't perfectly slot into any subculture. I just like too much stuff. Including a helluva lot of emo.
So go on, write a song while you sit in the corner of your candlelit room, drinking a bottle of $8 wine and crying yourself towards slumber because your thirtieth girlfriend in as many weeks ran off with the hot drummer of some cool band from the Midwest who showed up at your panty party after the show because you were too busy discussing the new Strokes video to notice she was being swept off her feet by the guy's star tattoos. I bet I'll listen to your song afterwards and adore its heart-rending sorrow. But I also like that guy's star tattoos.
(If you're reading this and you happen to be emo, don't get pissed off or cry or anything. The point here is... I really like emo! So I love you all, because that makes me just a bit more emo-y. I'm still being biting. Really, I love emo. Long live... ah never mind.)
By Andy Scheffler
Published : April 22, 2004.
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