Airport

More destinations txting clean

martinis & dirty planes

Check-in through flt status,

Flying u worldwide

is change

I wrote this poem about two years ago in the St. Louis airport while I was waiting for the plane taking my school's art club to New York. I mentally cut-and-pasted the words from these three posters I was sitting next to and rearranged them.

"I'd tell you, but..."

When people ask me what kind of music I listen to, I don't often give a straight answer. "Oh, mostly rock music," I usually say. I want to say, boldly and plainly, "I listen to punk rock." But it never happens that way. I hesitate because I love relating to people through music, but very few people I meet listen to the same kind of music I do. I'm not sure the majority of my peers even know what punk rock is. And how does someone relate to a genre of music they know nothing about?

But what's worse than meeting people who don't recognize punk is meeting the ones who do--and dislike it. A genre defined by those using music to make political statements--usually radical left-wing statements--doesn't have a very good reputation in the music community of rural Missouri. To say I listen to punk sends messages like, "

...

Then again, why do I even care? When I started listening to punk, it was a manifestation of everything I secretly thought, but was too afraid to say:

how I hated bigotry and the unnecessary conflicts it caused;

how I always held logic as a virtue;

how I valued individuality and thinking for myself;

how I hated compromising myself to fit in with other people.

Have I forgotten these things? Why do I back down from sharing my music and the freedom I found in it? Maybe I take music too personally. And that fosters this fear of people disliking my personality if they dislike my music. But that contradicts what I fell in love with about the genre. I love what I listen to, and if someone doesn't share my taste for punk, it's their problem.

EDIT:

What's in a name? This is the song I borrowed the title of this blog from:

Some new lyrics

These are some lyrics I found in an old notebook of mine. They are incomplete, but I will try to finish them in the near future and post the complete song, perhaps with audio!, if I figure out a good direction to take this song musically. But, here's what I have so far.


To those who truly understand
that we as people are the same,
And no matter what god dealt our hands,
we all are players in this game,
Well I just want
to let you know
That you don't have
to bleed for those
Who light up fires for a war
against all those whom they deplore.

Whoa-oh!
Diversity is not criminality.
Whoa-oh!
Unity is what we really need,
So take your hate and throw it away!

Who do you claim to be?
Where do you claim to stand?
Is it consistent with the damage you have wrought?


Currently, the song is title-less. I can't remember exactly when I started writing it, and I'm not entirely sure what the side notes in my notebook were getting at, haha. But, it sounds like I was making a statement about those who prefer opposition and confrontation rather than solidarity, so I'll play with these lyrics and try to come up with something good for you readers sometime soon.