Drive On

Yesterday I reread a book called "med uppenbar känsla för stil." A Swedish dissection of manhood, manliness, male culture etc. And a totally merciless dissection at that. It hit me like a hammer to both the head and the heart. Even more this time than the first time I read it. I recognize just about everything in that book. And I don't know when I feel worse. When I feel like "yes, this is the way I am and it is disgusting" or when I feel "no, this isn't the way I am but it is the way I am supposed to be. The way I have to act to be able to walk through this unscathed."

I see it so well. Being a man. What you have to be, what you have to do, how you have to act. At times I think there is something beautiful about at and at the same time it disgust me. It is so limiting. It is killing me. It is killing us all.

I am not wrong. That is the thing. I'm not like this because I want to, because it started of like a "fuck you" to the world. I am like this as a reaction to the world. Sure, I could dress differently, I could behave differently, I could think differently. But I shouldn't have to. That is the thing. I'm not like this because I don't want to be a part of the world, I am like this because I have to be a part of something, I have to have something when the world rejected me. The walls around me are there for a reason. Why should I crawl to the cross and ask to be a part of it now? I'm not the one to blame, not from the start. I didn't set out to be 'alternative' or what the fuck you want to call it. I became that way because that was the only place where I could make any kind of room for myself. Granted, at the moment it is a small, dank room. But it is mine. I took it. Contrary to what people might believe, it is not an act of opposition. It is not against the world or society or whatever you might want to call it. It is just different. It is something else. Something that very much exists on it's own premises.

Granted, I am quite defensive and sometimes (quite often) I act like offence is the best defense. I am not saying I have no fault in this. I searched eagerly for something different, something that was different to the core, and now I am paying the price. That is what first attracted me to Black Metal. The fact that it was so different. It didn't make any apologies. It acted according to it's own rules, rules that was (and is) very different from the ordinary worlds. It didn't make any apologies. It wasn't 'evil' because christianity was the real evil and had treated people badly. It was evil because it was evil. Everything from lyrics to views to aestethics was so much... It was the context for itself.

But at the same time it has killed something in me. This might seem utterly pretentious, but you know about the "1000 mile stare" that war veterans supposedly get when they fully understand the horrors of war? When they have seen things that couldn't possibly be understood by the rookies or the people back home? Sometimes I feel like I got something like that. Like I have seen the Tiger smile.

It's like there has been a search for extremes. Like not being a part of the world has made me search for something that is totally different to the core. And that maybe that was too different. Like it has forced me to lie, to adapt just as much as I would have to to be a part of the real world.

And I didn't really escape. I ended up in caricature, a parody of what I didn't want to be a part of. Not something inherently different. I chose to be a part of a culture that made me a perpetrator and not a victim. And that makes me sad. Incredibly sad. I am a part of the problem. I remember me an L talking about that. That she had always been friends with the fags, the ones that got beat up. My side is the other side. And I can't but help to admire her strenght and courage to stay on that side. I can't help but admire the strength and courage for all the people who can stay their ground on that side. I feels like they remaind true to themselves in so many ways. I admire that. And it makes me sad that I, at the time, couldn't be on that side. Or chose not to stay there.

At the same time I must say that the choices I have made, the side I have been on and the ideology that runs through it has given me an immense amount of pride and strength. I am not going to deny that and I am not going to regret that. But I think that it is time for me to build up many other sides of me and realize that not all of me has to fit in that frame. There is no need for a philosophy that permeats everything I do. I can be everything I want to at the same time and I shouldn't have to justify that to anyone, not even myself. I just wish I could have realized that earlier, instead of spending the last two (or more) years just trying to fit everything into some kind of mold. Or something like that. All this makes it sound like I'm incredibly one dimensional, and I can promise you that I am not. I have more dimension than you can probably guess (someone close to me once said that she was surprised that I could still surprise her by showing her new sides of myself after knowing each other for so long. Unfortunately they where not all good.). What I mean is that they don't have to fall neatly into the same basket. They need not be related. No red thread is needed. Something like that. But it is hard to think differently, and I don't know how to do it really. Everytime I try, a little part of me is saying "you are selling out, you are betraying what you are." And that is not a nice feeling. You want to be able to look yourself in the mirror.

But this feels like the start of Ende Neu.




Johnny Cash Lyrics
Drive On Lyrics

Anyways, I recommend everyone that can (especially males) to read "med uppenbar känsla för stil." It won't take you very long (I finished it in under 3 hours) but it is really spot on. I don't know if there is anything in the book that I disagree with. It is incredibly true and because it is true it is incredibly sad (I almost started to cry a couple of times when I read it because I recognized what I am and what I am not). It explains why we have machismo (in lack of a better word) to blame for so much and how it permeats every aspect of life. That we can't go or do anything without being our genders in the first place, not even if we want to. Read it. It's an order.

But I also recommend that you read that, "Klass - Är du fin nog" by Annelie Jordahl, the "Football Factory"-trilogy by John King, "Mitt förnamn är Ronny" by Ronny Ambjörnsson and maybe "Amon the Thugs" by Bill Buford if you want to see and understand where I am coming from in some small way. Yes, I know that there is probably a dozen or so books by highly skilled scholars dealing with the same subject and probably manages to explain parts of it quite well but I doubt that the really get it, that they really understand why people act like they do on their own emotional level. And I doubt that they can convey that understanding to reader properly, on an emotional level. It like book about neo nazism. There's hundreds of reports about kids from socially 'challenged' areas, explaining how they search for some point and meaning. But that doesn't make you understand the hate they feel. Not really. It makes you understand that they hate and why they hate, but not the hate in itself. It is like that.

Anyways, those are the books that I mostly recognize (parts of) myself in. Unfortunately.