Punk... it's the only thing that's ever truly made sense to me. Punk is almost like a moving, changing body of
life - an everchanging
idea. It is a personal
concept to all those who find themselves wrapped up in its midst. I've had long conversations staying up all night talking to people about it. One kid told me he thought that all the kids who spend all their time analyzing it instead of just enjoying it were the ones who were never truly in it. Another that it was simply thinking outside the box. He pointed to the TV and said, "your average person will be sucked into the
TV, unaware of all going on around it. A punk is focused on the areas around it. Outside the box."
Sure it's a
fashion, a
music,
shock value. Some things just don't shock anymore.
Ideals change, I truly believe that the punk kids are some of the smartest kids I've met. We wear a uniform to represent which part of the "
scene" we come from and to have some sort of group identity. Identity is something all human beings cling to. We are no different. We stray from the "
norm," not
conforming to society but conforming to each other.Some do this through crust, 77, anarcho, street or whatever else. We know who we are through each other. We attend to our basic human needs. We hit each other when we're angry, when we see something we don't like we shout at the top of our lungs and if we can't fix it we tell others what's wrong and plummet toward our beliefs of what is right and wrong with fire and passion.
We
dance in the street, laughing at each other and ourselves. We take ourselves too seriously sometimes but we still
joke about it. We see bands in friends basements and don't treat our favorite bands as rock stars. No one is put on a golden pedestal.
We play in bands even if we suck. We're curious to try new things, always searching for that obscure band that will blow our minds. We give the "new" kids a hard time - some do this more than others. We do it to see if they'll stick with it six months from now.
We stick together. We feel connected with each other, even on some indistinct level. We make our own
history which we record in songs we've written.
Punk is shaking things up. It's following your heart even though you know it might be wrong. It's never doubting your instincts. No one looks the same - no one thinks the same. Punk isn't reading something and automatically believing it as fact. It's reading something and taking it as opinion, analayzing it, thinking about it and determining for yourself whether you believe it or not.