Relics and Simulacra

The other day I heard a radio commercial that said "Guys, get a haircut and ditch the flannel. It's not 1992 anymore!"

After a most disparaging comment about the man's taste in music, I stopped to think about what that means for me. I still love Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Nirvana, and if I never liked Pearl Jam, it's OK, because they were posers and sellouts from the very beginning, and Alanis Morisette alone could have kicked that band's collective ass.

I don't get fashion styles that involve Buddy Holly's glasses, but not his music. I still prefer the time when men didn't talk about shoes unless one guy tracked poo into another man's house. Clothes, when I come from, were not discussed. It's cool for you to like the logo on my t-shirt, complimenting the neckline and thread count is an invitation to get your ass kicked.

I'm a relic. I'm not even 30, and I'm a relic of an earlier time, when "clean" didn't matter, because our music was "thrash", or "grunge", and when we weren't listening to that, we appreciated the music of Jewel and Alanis Morisette, and felt bad that Paula Cole was right and most of the cowboys were (and still are, I suppose) gone.

Chicks were beautiful back then, too, not "hot". "Hot" wasn't really around yet, and the girls wore street clothes in their videos, unless they were trying to make a point. They got pissed off because some guy cheated on them, they didn't try to out-cheat him. In some cases, righteously pissed, and it was awesome, and guys respected it.

So, I'm a relic, but if I'm a relic, then what's a guy who cuts his hair just because the voice on the radio tells him to, then drink the protein-fiber-steroids shake offered in the next commercial, just so he can self-realize the self-indulgent 2012 mockery of the Ubermensch, with over-developed muscles, and a cage-fighting t-shirt?

A copy of a non-person, a person modeled after not another person or persons, but instead an impersonal image that no one has ever resembled. A perpetual desire to be something other than oneself. It's not even a valiant struggle to change oneself and rise above the masses, but to simply be the fullest realization of groupthought fashion. It is a pursuit, not of self-expression, but of artifice.

Self-expression, the oft-championed cause of starving artists and unnaturally-colored high-schoolers everywhere, is in fact a very rare thing. To express one's self requires one to be fully aware of what  one's self is, and while it may be flamboyant or reserved, it's never artificial.

I heard a quote attributed to a glam metal musician about the rise of grunge, and while I've sadly forgotten who said it, it basically went "Then Nevermind came out, and I thought 'Oh, guess I better buy some flannel'. We just did not get it." The musician did not understand what the flannel meant, did not understand that Kurt Cobain wasn't chasing an image, he was simply wearing clothes.

Self-expression is not an image that can be chased. Self-expression is expressing oneself in a way that naturally and logically flows from that Self. This is not to say that all forms of self-expression are necessarily invalid if they are unconscious, it could hardly be said that the grunge movement's appreciation for flannel was a meaningless coincidence, but neither could it be said to be a conscious, self-expressive choice.

If there could be said to be a downside to self-expression, it is that people, as they grow older, do not naturally remain caught up with the latest fashions. There comes a time when a certain combination of clothing, haircut, and mannerisms has become, or perhaps has been allowed to come from, the self, and although that combination will slowly change, it will not change in accordance with the fashion-conscious public.

In time, people slowly get cut off from the flow of time, and become relics, but they're real, and that is *always* to be preferred.

And all that to say: "Screw you, man, I like having long hair!"