Episode XIII: Embrace Your Inner Weirdo

DIARY OF A FADING ROCKSTAR - Episode XIII:
Embrace Your Inner Weirdo!

Point one: Rumors of my untimely death have been greatly exaggerated.
Point two: I have been remiss in reporting to you on schedule due to the invasion of “real life” issues, which make a life of the mind (as they would have called it in the 19th century) something of a folly (those things 19th century gentlemen had built in their backyards that resembled miniature castles, or children’s playhouses). But here I am again to stimulate your mental life and hopefully inspire you to your own further research.

Since some of you may be new to this column, I’d like to invite you to catch up by reading, at your leisure of course, Episodes I – XIII. In brief, here is a recap:
In the 1980′s I was in something of a rebel rock band that promised to surf the new wave to whatever heights were attainable at that time. At what may have, or may not have, been the peak of industry interest in our little roadshow, I took the parachute option, and it was far from golden.

Since then I have agonized over how I might have handled the experience differently, and how some of my seemingly eccentric choices and behaviors were completely unavoidable. A great deal of solitary cogitation has gone into this process over the last quarter of a century, including untold numbers of short-lived bands that in one way or another did not approach the same level of chaos magick as that first endeavor. Perhaps that’s just the way it goes with anything, and I have certainly explored this possibility in depth as well.

What I have failed to do, in fact somewhat catastrophically, is to abandon my interest in pursuing music in some form of expression, whether or not anyone actually hears or sees any of it. Some people whose opinion I respect have opined that such reluctance to abandon the old aspirations is the main cause of my failure to succeed at anything else. My contention may seem like rhetorical hairsplitting; but the way I see it, my failure to succeed at anything else is proof enough that any attempt on my part to turn my back on what at one time seemed like Cosmic Destiny of comic book proportions, is doomed to certain failure.
To fulfill the promise of the title of this episode, I would like to quote a highly trusted and respectable producer and musician I have had the good fortune to work with over the years, who said: “Sooner or later, you have got to stop this pretense that you are normal. This Clark Kent routine of yours is really getting old.”

It’s my belief that you who are reading this – whoever you may be – contain within yourself the potential energy to do or experience anything you can imagine. All that is required is that you imagine it. What some people refer to as success or failure is, I believe, largely a problem of imagination. Most of us have grave difficulty imagining anything beyond what we fear to be true, and then expending all our energy running from those imaginings, as if in a nightmare, being chased by an invisible demon whose presence is made known by an ominous, thunderous booming sound…..which, if we were able to awaken, we would discover is merely the sound of the pulse of our own blood against our eardrum, pressed damply to the pillow.

One of the things that disturbs us away from our reaching and taking hold of the overripe fruit of our own lives is that we see so many assholes who don’t have the slightest bit of trouble stuffing their faces not only with their own fruit but the fruit of everyone around them. The other thing that scares us is seeing people who have devoted their existence to expressing their true selves, and perceiving them to be deeply weird. Dear God, we think to ourselves, are those my choices? Asshole or weirdo? Why can’t I be a nice, normal person and be an artist?
I have some good news, and some bad news. The bad news first: You can’t be a nice, normal person and also be an artist, because nice, normal people are to busy making others feel good to ever express anything containing any sort of energy. Nice, normal people paint pictures that hang in hospital corridors, and write songs that get played over drug store public address systems. An artist doesn’t have time to be concerned with being nice and normal, because they are too busy being exactly who and what they already are, without living up to the expectations of others.

The good news is, you’ve been sold nice and normal and safe as being the only way to be happy, and it’s false advertising. It’s a filthy lie. The only way to be happy is to be exactly who and what you already are. Loudly. Boisterously. Shamelessly. If you’re worried about morality or ethics, being oneself is completely and inescapably coterminous with kindness. Who’s the biggest asshole? The person who sees others as standing in the way of their fulfillment. A fully, fearlessly expressive individual has no fear of anyone standing in their way, because it’s impossible. Like X-ray vision, creativity has the ability to pass through solid objects, such as other people. It also has the ability to see inside things and people and to accept the qualities found therein without judgment of any kind.

I was sayin let me out of here before I was even born–it’s such a gamble when you get a face It’s fascinatin to observe what the mirror does but when I dine it’s for the wall that I set a place — Richard Hell

There has been a lot of marketing grease squirted all over the concept of the Geek, for which famous rich guy Bill Gates bears some responsibility. With 20-20 hindsight, everybody picked on in school for being a geek can now point to the Fortune 500 and say, “Behold, my people.” Because of this cultural sea change, being a card-carring geek has been rendered “cool” and thus hopelessly trivialized beyond recognition. Television now abounds with a stereotypical token character appearing in every show – the cool geek who dresses nerdy and is smarter than everyone else and you better not laugh at him/her because he/she could lock you out of your network account in a heartbeat, or load up your hard drive with bestiality porn.

This co-opting of the Nerd is what most of us expected, or should have if we were paying attention. The Nerd is to the 00′s what grungers and ravers were to the 90′s and punks and headbangers were to the 80′s. The Nerd is cool. Therefore, the Nerd is dead.

Thankfully, there’s a niche waiting for you that now has room to move into the spotlight. Now is the time of the Weirdo.

Everybody has a place on the bus – the jock, the nerd, the thug, the stoner, the cheerleader – but the weirdo is the one people don’t want to sit next to. It’s time to step up and claim that seat. You are a weirdo. You don’t occupy yourself with computers and Japanese action figures and comic books cartoons for grownups – you do weird things. You look weird. Even the person bristling with piercings and tattoos and bondage wear looks down on you. Junkies and tweakers and stoners flinch when you walk by. The homeless person spare changing everybody on the street doesn’t even bother to talk to you.

It requires this sort of fearless diffidence towards public acceptance that is the hallmark of the true Rockstar, knighted by no one but her/himself. When you’re weird people don’t look at you and think “Punk” or “Metalhead” or “Skinhead” or “Juggalo” or “stockbroker”. They look at you and go “WTF??” Or they look at you and then quickly look away.

You don’t have to smell bad – that’s so incredibly done before. In fact, a wonderful-smelling Weirdo is the hallmark of defied expectations – everybody expects the weirdo to be somehow repulsive, but instead they are unsettlingly attractive. They might have a look for which they’d be chased off the runways of Paris with pitchforks and torches, but they are not otherwise repellent. They’re just weird. They are unique in a way impossible to ignore.

The studied, self conscious type of wanna-be weirdo who stands in front of the mirror each morning putting together their allegedly “weird” look is not a true Weirdo. That person is a Hipster. Everbody hates Hipsters these days, but they have each other. They kind of all look the same, with their skinny jeans and hats. You are not a hipster. The hipsters look at you and instead of smiling and nodding they think “God, what a Weirdo!” This is to be taken as a compliment.

I am not going to list the Weirdo bands. It’s bad luck, bad juju, killing the goose. But you probably own some of their records. Some of them even got famous and made a lot of money being weird. There are hundreds of thousands of people who buy their recordings and show up at their concerts; there are thousands of people who know the words to their songs; there are hundreds of people who think they are the only ones who “get” them, prefer their earlier work, etc. There may be a few dozen of their fans who are Weirdos and who recognize them as such. These people may party with the band, but it is more likely that they would never be allowed backstage, because they are just too weird. But they don’t mind, because there’s too many fucking normal people backstage anyway.

How do you know you’re a Weirdo? If you have to ask, you aren’t one. And if you think you are, you aren’t one. True weirdos don’t recognize such distinctions. They are unconscious and impervious to the projections or values of others. It is precisely their rapturous devotion to the contents of their own heads that make them Weirdos. Still, they are capable of great kindness, intimacy, and geenrosity with others, simply because they are as incapable of judging others as they are themselves. When they come in contact with people who insist on categorizing things or people, they warmly and amiably fail to comprehend.

You may not be a Weirdo. It’s perfectly fine either way. It’s not something one aspires to, although some people aspire not to be weird. The main thing is, everyone has an inner Weirdo. It could be that this inner Weirdo looks like a Nerd or a Geek or a Punk or a Mod or a Hippie – but it is simply a manifestation of the part of that person that is unclouded by the perceptions or expectations of others. Let’s say, for instance, you spill barbecue sauce on your white shirt at a party. The normal person would try to wash it out in the sink, or maybe ask the host if they could borrow a T-shirt. The Weirdo takes the shirt off and dips the whole thing in the barbecue sauce.

Kiss tried to look like Weirdos, but a Weirdo would never write a song like “Beth”, apologizing for hours spent in the rehearsal space. A Weirdo’s girl/boyfriend would be waiting for the Weirdo in a sleeping bag behind the couch.

Weirdos don’t play genre music. They don’t play music that can be described by listing their influences. Weirdos sometimes have obvious influences; but if the musicians who influenced them were to hear or see them, they would say “Who the hell are these weirdos??” Unless they themselves are Weirdos, in which case they let the younger Weirdos come along with them on tour.

Be wary of the band that tries to sell itself as a “Weirdo band”. Most of these are simply further regurgitated iterations of the “Hipster” template. “They’re, like, so WEIRD, dude!!” No: Weirdo bands are not weird as a selling point. They don’t wear their own band T-shirts on stage. They don’t perform in clown makeup or breathe fire or any other normal-trying-to-be-weird routine. The audience might mistake them for roadies sound-checking the amps. They might mistake them for audience members who got lost backstage. Or they might mistake them for aliens trying to pass themselves off as humans. You will recognize the Weirdo band because that is the ones the Weirdos in the audience dance their weird dances to. The Weirdos in the audience do not sing along because they want to hear the music; if they wanted to sing they’d start their own band, and in fact probably have.

Weirdos aren’t considered cool, hip, up to date, what’s happening or cutting edge, even though they are almost always imitated by wanna-bes, sometimes the minute they first appear in public. Oftentimes the imitators will sell more records and be way more popular than the original Weirdo band they were imitating. That’s because the majority of people don’t want something weird, they want something familiar, that confirms their own prejudices regarding what music and art are for. Weirdos do not compose music or art that is socially significant or purposeful. Sometimes they play benefit concerts, if the people organizing the benefit are weird enough to accept what they have to offer. Weirdo bands are habituated to creating and re-creating sounds that reflect an inner life that is invisible and probably completely inexplicable to others. However, the purity of their intent is undeniable with or without understanding. Weirdo bands may face rejection or indifference by the mainstream, but the five or six people who show up at their gig (be it a basement party, a Mexican discoteque, or a pizza restaurant) respond to them as if they have been waiting their entire lives to hear and see them.
It’s hard to find other Weirdos, particularly the right kind for my particularly weird ongoing project. That’s why, at age 44, I’m still searching. It’s not like we have a secret handshake or anything. This article may be my only chance to find my Weirdos before dying of old age.

It certainly is a weird way to recruit musicians for a band.