(no subject)
Traditions and Folkways:
As a lifting scraper in an Americana-style restaurant, I’ve heard no small amount of old Christmas songs in the past few weeks. You know the type, I’m sure. Choir’s assume the role of adults, singing of how wonderful the season is and how the children are all behaving because they know Old Saint Nick is watching them. And of course, the sectarian message is there as well, but something unusual struck me about Christmas this year. Of course, the commercial aspect of the holiday is a giant lie… but have you ever thought about how ridiculous of a lie it actually is?
My martial arts instructor’s two year old is as sharp as knife, and he always knows when we’re trying to trick him into behaving. And if I, as an individual, spewed off this tremendous story of a jolly red fatty piloting a magical sled pulled by deer all around the world in a night, eating his own body weight in milk and cookies hundreds of times over and squeezing through chimneys, heat ducts, and all manner of household openings, they’d know I was lying. The only thing about the Christmas mythos is that so many parents contribute and so much of our yearly yuletide activities support the myth that children simply have to believe. And it is under this charade that parents rejoice, ceding their ability to govern their children’s behavior over to the seasonal daemon, which is often more effective than they could ever hope to be.
I’m kind of disenfranchised with a lot of our traditional American/South Jerseyan folkways. Everything people do is so damnably complicated. I spent the past three months sitting in classrooms absorbing a lot of redundant information that I may never use. I also spent two nights a week exchanging clean and dirty porcelains in a structure made of dead trees, so that people from miles away could come and eat food that was grown nowhere near this wooden structure. Why do I do this? I need to acquire inky pulp sheets with which to finances a large metal construct, which I did not create and I don’t know how to maintain, so that I can transport myself 20 miles from my home daily to fill my head with redundant information and make music.
Now, the music bit, out of all of this I can understand. While I despise the unnaturalness of the scenario, I am simply not prepared to leave the system. And if I cannot leave, I might as well participate in the most ridiculous way possible. I’m not disrespecting my craft in the slightest. I believe that making music is a very appropriate use of time, despite the complexity it entails. It’s just that I think people (or at the very least, just me) were not built to spend their day in repetitive, stupid labor to contribute to a horribly vague and unapproachably complex society, which is run by an equally disenfranchising government.
I also find myself quite at odds with the rules of courtship that I used to so thoroughly embrace. I seem to frequently fall for the romantic type, only to realize shortly after that I have long since quit being a romantic. I used to hold the attention of girls in high school, when I was much less sure of myself. Now, I know who I am. I feel physically attractive, amusing, and interesting, but I also feel like I’ve lost something.
I dunno. It may just be the changes in times and environments. In High School, I bought into society because I was very much a member of society. I had the band and the plays. I was there: competing, acting, playing, singing, and dancing alongside my friends. I was definitely around people more often and I think that made it easier for me to relate, attract, and vice-versa. Nowadays, it feels like I’m some gnarly recluse on the top of Mount Krumpett.
I think I developed that when I started college. I decided who around me was worth my time and who to write off and deal with when they bothered me. I was never an elitist of any kind, but I definitely kept to myself and did my own thing more often. Or rather, I think I got much better at doing my own thing while I was in a group of people. Maybe I’ve become more entertaining because of the odd things I do or stories I’ve stolen. Either way, though the people around me may seem comfortable, I feel as if every time I go through another rendition of Anderklese and the Beast, I’m telling them to myself and no one else.
I feel like crap.
As a lifting scraper in an Americana-style restaurant, I’ve heard no small amount of old Christmas songs in the past few weeks. You know the type, I’m sure. Choir’s assume the role of adults, singing of how wonderful the season is and how the children are all behaving because they know Old Saint Nick is watching them. And of course, the sectarian message is there as well, but something unusual struck me about Christmas this year. Of course, the commercial aspect of the holiday is a giant lie… but have you ever thought about how ridiculous of a lie it actually is?
My martial arts instructor’s two year old is as sharp as knife, and he always knows when we’re trying to trick him into behaving. And if I, as an individual, spewed off this tremendous story of a jolly red fatty piloting a magical sled pulled by deer all around the world in a night, eating his own body weight in milk and cookies hundreds of times over and squeezing through chimneys, heat ducts, and all manner of household openings, they’d know I was lying. The only thing about the Christmas mythos is that so many parents contribute and so much of our yearly yuletide activities support the myth that children simply have to believe. And it is under this charade that parents rejoice, ceding their ability to govern their children’s behavior over to the seasonal daemon, which is often more effective than they could ever hope to be.
I’m kind of disenfranchised with a lot of our traditional American/South Jerseyan folkways. Everything people do is so damnably complicated. I spent the past three months sitting in classrooms absorbing a lot of redundant information that I may never use. I also spent two nights a week exchanging clean and dirty porcelains in a structure made of dead trees, so that people from miles away could come and eat food that was grown nowhere near this wooden structure. Why do I do this? I need to acquire inky pulp sheets with which to finances a large metal construct, which I did not create and I don’t know how to maintain, so that I can transport myself 20 miles from my home daily to fill my head with redundant information and make music.
Now, the music bit, out of all of this I can understand. While I despise the unnaturalness of the scenario, I am simply not prepared to leave the system. And if I cannot leave, I might as well participate in the most ridiculous way possible. I’m not disrespecting my craft in the slightest. I believe that making music is a very appropriate use of time, despite the complexity it entails. It’s just that I think people (or at the very least, just me) were not built to spend their day in repetitive, stupid labor to contribute to a horribly vague and unapproachably complex society, which is run by an equally disenfranchising government.
I also find myself quite at odds with the rules of courtship that I used to so thoroughly embrace. I seem to frequently fall for the romantic type, only to realize shortly after that I have long since quit being a romantic. I used to hold the attention of girls in high school, when I was much less sure of myself. Now, I know who I am. I feel physically attractive, amusing, and interesting, but I also feel like I’ve lost something.
I dunno. It may just be the changes in times and environments. In High School, I bought into society because I was very much a member of society. I had the band and the plays. I was there: competing, acting, playing, singing, and dancing alongside my friends. I was definitely around people more often and I think that made it easier for me to relate, attract, and vice-versa. Nowadays, it feels like I’m some gnarly recluse on the top of Mount Krumpett.
I think I developed that when I started college. I decided who around me was worth my time and who to write off and deal with when they bothered me. I was never an elitist of any kind, but I definitely kept to myself and did my own thing more often. Or rather, I think I got much better at doing my own thing while I was in a group of people. Maybe I’ve become more entertaining because of the odd things I do or stories I’ve stolen. Either way, though the people around me may seem comfortable, I feel as if every time I go through another rendition of Anderklese and the Beast, I’m telling them to myself and no one else.
I feel like crap.