CURVE YOUR ENTHUSIASM (14)
By:
August 10, 2023
One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of reconsidered passions, reassessed hates, and reversed feelings everywhere in-between. Series edited by Adam McGovern.
REVOLTING DEVELOPMENT
In my teenage rebelliousness I enjoyed making people uncomfortable.
I loved the humor of Tom Green. I even liked the show Jackass, but cerebral weird stuff was more appealing to me than the meathead, darevevil, skateboard-crew stunts of dudes that looked super socially accepted.
I once took the bottom of a desk off in high school. It had some metal beams formed into a sort of U shape. I held the U part up to the sky in the quad and babbled a bunch of nonsense as if it was a religious artifact and I was having a religious experience. Many other times I ran into the quad and shouted at people not to go to class over poorly played guitar. I was suspended often for countless ways I was disruptive.
I later realized I could be disruptive on stage, and spent years yelling my thoughts over a guitar or banjo in front of my house and later on at protests and open mics and occasionally opened for some better known musicians.
The personalized concerts I gave in front of my house were probably some of the more brilliant and should have been livestreamed. Technical proficiency never mattered much to me. But once I hit a rhyme or idea I liked, I would then launch into a cathartic and somehow much more in-tune and rhythmic tirade about political systems or the absurd reality of people I know and current events and the literal happenings of the precise moment peppered in, just in case anyone didn’t catch that it was freestyle. It was sort of Andy Kaufman meets Sacco and Vanzetti meets the Violent Femmes meets Ludacris minus being radio-worthy. Probably would have been good on TikTok. But I don’t like shocking people as much as I used to.
I’m not sure I was wrong about much of what I said. But I want some harmony and happiness in my personal life now. And my old antics came from a place that made me pretty hard to get close to.
Times are getting real, and I can’t wait to see the next generation stand up artistically and be the resistance to curve the current trajectory of the world.
I just may pick up a guitar or banjo again, but it’s going to be less agitated on my end moving forward.
CURVE YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Adam McGovern | Tom Nealon on PIZZA PURISM | Holly Interlandi on BOY BANDS | Heather Quinlan on THE ’86 METS | Whitney Matheson on THE SMITHS | Bishakh Som on SUMMER | Jeff Lewonczyk on WHOLE BELLY CLAMS | Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons on HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER | Nikhil Singh on LOVE ISLAND UK | Adrienne Crew on CILANTRO | Adam McGovern on MISSING PERSONS | Art Wallace on UFOs | Fran Pado on LIVERWURST | Lynn Peril on ELTON JOHN’S GREATEST HITS | Marlon Stern Lopez on ADOLESCENT REBELLION | Juan Gonzalez on STAN & JACK or JACK & STAN | Christopher-Rashee Stevenson on BALTIMORE | Josh Glenn on FOOTLOOSE | Annie Nocenti on SIDEVIEW MIRROR | Mandy Keifetz on BREATHLESS | Brian Berger on HARRY CREWS | Ronald Wimberly on GAMING AND DATING | Michele Carlo on HERITAGE FOODS | Gabriela Pedranti on MADONNA | Ingrid Schorr on MAXFIELD PARRISH AND SUE LEWIN | Mariane Cara on ORANGE.
JACK KIRBY PANELS | CAPTAIN KIRK SCENES | OLD-SCHOOL HIP HOP | TYPEFACES | NEW WAVE | SQUADS | PUNK | NEO-NOIR MOVIES | COMICS | SCI-FI MOVIES | SIDEKICKS | CARTOONS | TV DEATHS | COUNTRY | PROTO-PUNK | METAL | & more enthusiasms!