"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: