Real
We will never be special, you and I. We will never be anything to remember. We will never be talked about, or written about, or read about, or sung about, because we aren’t unique. We aren’t trying to be. We just want to be ourselves, and, hell, if that doesn’t shatter the world, so be it. We just want to live the lives we feel like living, and be the people we naturally tend to be, because anything else would be a lie. Then, we’d have to face this puzzling question-is it actually appealing to be remembered for being someone you weren’t? We don’t think so. We are real. We are real.
Every day, I wake up and turn on the television and come face to face with someone who the world credits as being “unique.” Our faces are actually the same size-my TV isn’t big enough to classify me as the disgustingly rich, or small enough to classify me as the astoundingly broke-but the differences between us are pretty marked. He has blue hair and three holes in each ear, and the girl alongside manages to outdo him. You can’t see his face behind the veneer of uniqueness.
“How does it feel to know that kids out there look up to you?” the pretty blonde host asks.
“Oh, man, we just do it for the kids out there, because they are the ones, man. They’re the ones. It’s all about the future, man,” he replies, saying nothing with many words, while both the girl with him and the host nod as if they understood, and the crowd goes crazy at the sound of his voice.
Kids look up to him? That’s a joke. Kids don’t want to be anything like him. They don’t want blue hair or Swiss cheese ears. No, they just want to be seen as special, as different, and for God’s sake, if they have to die their hair a brighter shade of blue than him, they will. In the world today the more individual you seem, the more respect you earn, the more people like you, and if you’ve got a little fame, the more that people like you the more money you bring in. Kids today don’t realize that as blue as his hair might be, all he cares about is the green.
So they imitate. People think they’re creative. People think they’re expressing themselves. People think they’re unique. People think they’ve got style. I think they’ve just dug themselves into a hole caused by a lack of self-confidence, and instead of trying to get out by figuring out who they are, they try to hide behind a mask of pseudo-originality and hope that nobody sees the hole around them.
I’m not trying to be different because I know I’ll fail. I’m not fenced in by some brick wall of normality-I can see and do new things-but I’m not trying to cover up every inch of who I am because it’s too average. All blue-hair has managed to do is set a standard that unless you’re the only one wearing the hat you wear, you’re just like everybody else, and God forbid that happen. In reality, the people who buy into that are the ones who are like everybody else-insecure, and so wrapped up in being different that he ends up doing what everybody else does. Just a variation on the theme.
When people stop questing after being different, that’s when something new that has a little soul will show up. Right now, all we have is a bunch of people attempting to be that “something new,” and to that I say, “If you’re trying to be it, you aren’t it.” Someday somebody will show up and he’ll be different, not just act different. He won’t hate normality or shun it, he’ll embrace it and mold it into his own style. He’ll take normality to a new level, and when that becomes normal, someone else will do the same thing that he did. But until everyone else stops pretending to be what they aren’t, we’ll never be able to tell what’s real and what’s forced.
Every day, I wake up and turn on the television and come face to face with someone who the world credits as being “unique.” Our faces are actually the same size-my TV isn’t big enough to classify me as the disgustingly rich, or small enough to classify me as the astoundingly broke-but the differences between us are pretty marked. He has blue hair and three holes in each ear, and the girl alongside manages to outdo him. You can’t see his face behind the veneer of uniqueness.
“How does it feel to know that kids out there look up to you?” the pretty blonde host asks.
“Oh, man, we just do it for the kids out there, because they are the ones, man. They’re the ones. It’s all about the future, man,” he replies, saying nothing with many words, while both the girl with him and the host nod as if they understood, and the crowd goes crazy at the sound of his voice.
Kids look up to him? That’s a joke. Kids don’t want to be anything like him. They don’t want blue hair or Swiss cheese ears. No, they just want to be seen as special, as different, and for God’s sake, if they have to die their hair a brighter shade of blue than him, they will. In the world today the more individual you seem, the more respect you earn, the more people like you, and if you’ve got a little fame, the more that people like you the more money you bring in. Kids today don’t realize that as blue as his hair might be, all he cares about is the green.
So they imitate. People think they’re creative. People think they’re expressing themselves. People think they’re unique. People think they’ve got style. I think they’ve just dug themselves into a hole caused by a lack of self-confidence, and instead of trying to get out by figuring out who they are, they try to hide behind a mask of pseudo-originality and hope that nobody sees the hole around them.
I’m not trying to be different because I know I’ll fail. I’m not fenced in by some brick wall of normality-I can see and do new things-but I’m not trying to cover up every inch of who I am because it’s too average. All blue-hair has managed to do is set a standard that unless you’re the only one wearing the hat you wear, you’re just like everybody else, and God forbid that happen. In reality, the people who buy into that are the ones who are like everybody else-insecure, and so wrapped up in being different that he ends up doing what everybody else does. Just a variation on the theme.
When people stop questing after being different, that’s when something new that has a little soul will show up. Right now, all we have is a bunch of people attempting to be that “something new,” and to that I say, “If you’re trying to be it, you aren’t it.” Someday somebody will show up and he’ll be different, not just act different. He won’t hate normality or shun it, he’ll embrace it and mold it into his own style. He’ll take normality to a new level, and when that becomes normal, someone else will do the same thing that he did. But until everyone else stops pretending to be what they aren’t, we’ll never be able to tell what’s real and what’s forced.