Reaching new Hawthorne Heights

I went to Emo Night at Orange Ale House yesterday and fucking loved it.

I didn't consider myself an "emo kid" in the genre's heyday. I used to make fun of it, and pop punk, while rationalizing that the music I liked wasn't actually in that category. It was part of the whole "I'm into metal and emo is just flimsy tin foil" mentality. In hindsight, it was so silly to be elitist about. I love a variety of music, but there are three appeals of emo and pop punk (for me): the nostalgia, the surrounding community that bonds over it, and the fact that the lyrics are melodramatically angsty but the songs are upbeat and energetic.

I was happy to see the variety of ages. There were people in their thirties who remembered Good Charlotte and Death Cab for Cutie. There were the 22-year-olds screaming along to Paramore. There was music I remember from eighth grade. It spanned from the early to late 2000s. Some people dressed up. Others were people who used to wear fishnet shirts and Chuck Taylors, but still love the scene even if they don't sport the style anymore. It's more about the music and social bonds than the clothes. We came of age in the time when scene first reared its shaggy bleached head, and you had to drape your hair over one eye because the world was too sad to look at with both.

I saw so many people I knew. We were all bouncing in a continuous wave while skeletons and mummies danced over the projection screen. People wore glow necklaces as halos. We passed around a microphone and yelled into it together. Those unfamiliar with this subculture might think it's confusing how the lyrics "I can fall asleep tonight or die, because you kill me" could be sung with such joy.

Experiences like that are unique because you're in a crowded space with everyone talking, but you know what they're all saying. You're speaking the same words, but the lyrics mean something different to everyone. "There's a story at the bottom of this bottle" could remind someone of booze-fueled open mic nights, while reminding somebody else of soda bottles they stored money in as a child. Everyone has their own story at the bottom of a different bottle, and all of these bottles are floating in one wave, mixing their contents.

At some point during the night, a guy tried to pick me up by saying, "You look sad. What's the matter?" I bet that's his designated line to use at emo night. My sister told me, "That's not negging; it's therapisting."

One time the music stopped and a host yelled, "Here's something to dry these emo tears!" and then showered us with streamers and Silly String.

When I went into the room with all the music, Mike worried I'd been swallowed by the crowd. Then he saw that I loved it. Any night that ends with me jumping up and down and covered in Silly String is a good one.

Why "The Christmas Shoes" don't fit

Many of you likely remember that back in Ye Olde MySpace circa 2005, there was a bulletin feature. The bulletins were very much like Facebook statuses, but with one difference: you had to click on a hyperlink, in the form of a title, to read them. This sometimes tricked you into reading annoying chain mail. It was clickbait of the mid 2000s.

One of the varieties of chain mail was a saccharine, poorly written story meant to elicit strong feelings. There were multiple ones, but they usually followed this formula. I’m inventing this one, but they all sounded like:

Once a boy n his girlfriend were sitting @ a park. The gurl asked, “Do u like me???”

The boy said no.
The girl asked, “Do you want me?”
The boy said no.
The girl asked, “Do u want to be with me now??”
The boy said no.

The gurl ran off crying and on her way home she was hit by a car an died!!! Later, her bf stood @ her grave with tears in his eyes and said, “I said I didn’t like u because I meant that I LOVE you. I said I didn’t want u becuz I meant that I NEED you. And I said I don’t want 2 b with you now, because I want to b with u FOREVER. But now it’s too late.”

Friends, never be afraid to tell people how you feel!!! Repost if u cried.”

This was generally followed by a string of hearts and sad face emoticons.

In its defense, this was probably written by a twelve-year-old. And it was probably most often reposted by twelve-year-olds. But, to me, the song “Christmas Shoes” meets the same level of emotional depth. This becomes especially apparent as it’s played nonstop on the radio and in shopping centers throughout the holiday season. If you like it, I don’t look down on you for it. This is not a diatribe against you. But please allow me to explain my aversion.

Some of you may be thinking, “It’s about the true meaning of Christmas, which is giving to people! It’s about an impoverished boy with a terminally ill mother. How could that not move you?”

And that’s the problem. The implication, if not the direct response, from so many of the fans I’ve known is that you are fundamentally heartless if you’re unmoved by the narrative. That if you dislike the song, you must hate Christmas! And poor people! And children with terminally ill mothers! And Jesus! And shoes!

The reactions of the audience may not be the fault of the songwriters, but I believe the creators use aggressive tactics to shake out a response. This is how.

Manipulation within fiction is not inherently bad. When you choose to engage with fiction—whether through novels, illustrations, or songs that tell stories—you are, on a certain level, consenting to be emotionally manipulated. This does not mean deceived and lied to. This doesn’t mean being harmed. Rather, it means being purposefully made to feel things. But in that process, you want a nudge and not a shove.

The most skilled storytellers are ones who don’t let you know you’re being manipulated. You want to feel like you’re listening to a song, not being played as the instrument. The best puppeteers don’t let you see the strings. You want to feel, but to believe you have arrived at those reactions yourself. It feels patronizing to be made into a marionette, thrust clumsily around the stage by your own heartstrings.

What the songwriters and singers have done with “Christmas Shoes” is hit you over the head with a sentimental mallet. They start off the song with that little twinkly instrument that sounds like someone waving a fairy wand, to insinuate something magical will happen. They describe the boy as looking as visibly forlorn as possible, and then comes the gut punch: His mother’s dying and he just wants to buy her a pair of pretty shoes so she can look beautiful if she “meets Jesus tonight.” And he can’t afford the shoes, so the charitable narrator buys them for him at the end. It culminates with a sad sounding child singing the chorus, in case a Southern-accented vocalist evoking images of ‘Murica’s heartland isn’t enough. This is along the same vein as Hallmark cards and Nicholas Sparks novels. My husband described it as “a musical Thomas Kinkade painting.”

Aside from the maudlin quality, and the blunt force coercion, it looks on the surface like a critique of consumer culture. Everyone is going out and spending money, but this boy teaches the narrator the true meaning of Christmas by being so generous that it changes his outlook on life. This little child has nothing, but he’s breaking the bank to buy nice shoes for his mother so she can feel beautiful before she dies. At face value it looks like it flies in the face of materialism. But upon closer examination, it actually promotes it. This is why.

First, it pushes the idea that in order to be considered adequately poor to receive help, you must look as shabby as possible. The boy has torn clothes and his body is filthy. He is visibly helpless. This reeks of a “trauma porn” narrative, where writers exploit others’ pain in order to peddle inspiration.

The child does not want his mother to look as deprived as himself. He doesn’t want her to be denied lovely material things just because she’s poor. This is fair and it makes sense. But the plot line of this song plays into the very same moral it purports to defy: the idea of buying gifts you cannot afford to prove your love to others. That’s why this boy is so noble and selfless, because that’s what he’s trying to do. Also, since he’s a child, you wonder where he got the cash. He’s probably trying to buy his parent a present with her own limited money—not that he would likely have other options. That’s why the kindly adult who meets him in line decides to intervene and cover the cost himself.

The second factor that rings an alarm is not simply that she wants to feel beautiful, but that she wants to look pretty for Jesus in case she imminently dies. The song was originally written and performed by a Christian band, but it contradicts Christian values to imply that you need to be aesthetically pleasing to Jesus. That he is impressed with appearances and may turn you away if you don’t look fancy. This idea can be used to coerce people into buying things they can’t afford. If you want an example of how this manifests in real life, look at all the money people feel pressured to spend on expensive church clothes. I don't see this entirely as the fault of one song; the song is a symptom.

I understand this can all be seen as overanalyzing, and that sometimes a pair of shoes is just a pair of shoes. But songwriters, musicians, and producers place a great deal of thought and analysis into what they create. Nothing included in the final product is an accident.

I’m not immune to enjoying cheesy music. My playlists include an Avril Lavigne song and a massive Goo Goo Dolls catalog. But I do maintain that there’s a difference between emotional manipulation and emotional pressure, and “Christmas Shoes” stamps audiences under its soles with the latter.

My inner emo child is showing

Watched Blink 182's new video for "Bored to Death" and am currently torn in two directions like a Stretch Armstrong doll. The song is repetitive and the lyric "Life is too short to last long" is one of those maddening statements that's clearly meant to sound profound, but really is just self-defining (it's like saying "Fire's too hot to be cold"). But at the same time, damned if the scene of the angsty punk boy scratching messages into his desk and his bleach-haired girlfriend jumping around listening to oversized headphones and them skating in the parking lot doesn't leave my early 2000s mallcore heart screaming. I'm surprised I didn't combust into a cloud of AIM icons featuring Sally the Ragdoll and skulls with little pink bows on top.

Mood music

I don’t usually listen to purely instrumental music because I find lyrics more relatable. But at the same time, I can see why instrumental might be even more relatable because instead of including a storyline that might be specific, it encompasses a mood that can be tailored to even more situations.

Another playlist poem

Under the bridge, Jane says
“You don’t look back in anger
if
the nature of reality
is nothing to believe in.
I prefer wonder
the waiting for the good life
black snow
and
learning to fly
underground.”

Song titles: “Under the Bridge” and “Snow” by RHCP; “Jane Says” and “Underground” by Jane’s Addiction; “Don’t Look Back in Anger” and “The Nature of Reality” by Oasis; “Nothing to Believe In” and “The Good Life” by Cracker; “Wonder” by Natalie Merchant; “The Waiting” and “Learning to Fly” by Tom Petty; and “Black” by Pearl Jam.

Playlist poem #3

"I learn to fly with my alien girl
under Saturday's black hole sun.
A riptide of sweetness,
she's the phantom of the disco
with an audience of one."

(Written using song titles by Foo Fighters, Tacocat, Fallout Boy, Soundgarden, Vance Joy, Toadies, Glamour Assassins, and Rise Against.)

Playlist poetry

Today I came up with a game: Writing poems made almost entirely out of existing song titles. 

It could be a poem, or a statement, or a short story. It can be as serious or as silly as you want. It's okay to use your own words to connect the song titles when you construct the sentences. Don't use the same title twice in one poem. If you don't keep playlists, just write a poem/short story/sentence using the names of whatever songs come to mind and would fit together.

Here's mine. I capitalized the first letters of the song names.

"Today, us New Years Saints
Stutter a Connection,
a Whirring Holy Touch.
Welcome to the Church of Rock & Roll."

(Titles: "Today" by Smashing Pumpkins; "New Years" and "Saints" by The Breeders; "Stutter" and "Connection" by Elastica; "Whirring" by The Joy Formidable; "Holy Touch" and "Welcome to the Church of Rock & Roll" by Foxy Shazam.)

Here's another, from the same playlist:

"Graveyard Girl, the Initiator
cordially invites you
to Come Join the Murder
of American Society."

(Titles: "Graveyard Girl" by M83; "The Initiator" by Fefe Dobson; "Come Join the Murder" by White Buffalo & The Forest Rangers; "American Society" by L7. Yeah, my musical taste is all over the place.)

Feel free to try this.

Instrumental street harassment

After a precious week of no street harassment, I had to use my foghorn today.

On my way to my apartment building, a voice called out to me from a car, "Daaaaamn girl! Yo!" I ignored him, so he repeated it. "Hey, you hear me? I said daaaamn, girl! Yooooo!" Elongating the "yo" so I was sure to not miss a syllable.

I blasted the foghorn at him, in unison with his repetition of "damn girl, yo." Come to think of it, I was actually providing orchestra to his vocals. If he'd honked his car horn at me, it would have been a duet.

One-hit wonders, and the art of quitting while you're ahead

Fans are always disappointed when a band with great material stops releasing new music after about two albums, and the letdown is obviously understandable. But maybe it wasn't really a waste of potential that everyone was deprived of. Maybe the band was out of their best ideas and opted to end on a (literal) good note instead of fizzling and churning out mediocre music. They could have chosen to quit while they'd still be remembered at their peak.