Global Positioning System
Last night I had the pleasure of sitting in the second row for Henry Rollins' spoken word tour. This man is a genius. Not only did he bring up numerous great points, but he had everyone laughing harder than they had laughed in years. His stories were vivid and his enthusiasm was genuine. The show lasted two and a half hours. That's right, two and a half hours of one man armed with only one mic, and his thoughts and views. Simply amazing. I could listen to him speak for days on end. Best believe I'm getting tickets again the next time he comes to CT.
The Rollins show brought about two interesting, or at least I hope interesting, thoughts in my head. First off, I think I MAY have caught a glimpse of my future on that stage. Rollins is nearing 43 (I think his birthday is tomorrow), still very athletic, very opinionated, intellectual, funny, and single. The way he talks about women shows he knows women, but also shows how easily he gets bored. He still hasn't found anyone who can keep up with him. I may only be 25, but even now I'm finding it hard to find a woman who can keep up with me. I know it sounds egotistical, because it implies I'm all of those adjectives I used to describe Rollins, but I have been getting a much better insight into who I am, and quite frankly there are A LOT worse things I could end up being like than Rollins. To me, Rollins is the man. He knows who he is (which is something I think very few people can honestly say), and he's not afraid to lay it all out on the stage for ya. Sort of like "this is me, love it or hate it.... I honestly don't give a fuck because I love who I am."
The second thought that popped into my head on my hour plus drive home had to do with the crowd. For this particular show a cute girl with a pierced nose and chin sat to my right, and to my left was a lesbian couple, with the cute one having a pierced lip. The crowd was mostly, probably all, white, which led me to question, was this a cultural event for me? I'm white, and the crowd was white, but the normal people I run with are not white. To most of those people in the crowd, going to see Poison Pen would have been a huge shock to the system, a change from the norm. For me seeing Pen is normal. Then again, seeing Rollins is normal. In fact, in the time span of a week and a half my schedule has Rollins spoken word, Mos Def doing jazz, and Sarah Jones' one woman off Broadway show as events I'm attending. So the question that remains in my head is, is it a cultural event if it's all your culture? I consider all of those things I'm going to see things that help define who I am, yet most people consider having "culture" as doing things outside their personal norm. What if one's personal norm is more encompassing? If I enjoy many different things is there less of an opportunity for me to do something that would fall under the heading "cultural?" Or is the labeling of something as "cultural" simply for those who want to feel better than other people based on their own personal tastes? Come to think of it, both answers have some truth to them, and in 2004, in the multicultural society that we live in, there's really no excuse NOT to be doing many different things, all of which will end up defining you, in essence, making them not cultural at all. So after all that typing I guess the answer I've come up with is: the only way something can be a cultural event is in the short term, because in the long term it will help define who you are, and if you try to make yourself sound better than someone else just because of the things you enjoy you're really a schmuck. Oh yeah, and ROLLINS RULES!
Last night I had the pleasure of sitting in the second row for Henry Rollins' spoken word tour. This man is a genius. Not only did he bring up numerous great points, but he had everyone laughing harder than they had laughed in years. His stories were vivid and his enthusiasm was genuine. The show lasted two and a half hours. That's right, two and a half hours of one man armed with only one mic, and his thoughts and views. Simply amazing. I could listen to him speak for days on end. Best believe I'm getting tickets again the next time he comes to CT.
The Rollins show brought about two interesting, or at least I hope interesting, thoughts in my head. First off, I think I MAY have caught a glimpse of my future on that stage. Rollins is nearing 43 (I think his birthday is tomorrow), still very athletic, very opinionated, intellectual, funny, and single. The way he talks about women shows he knows women, but also shows how easily he gets bored. He still hasn't found anyone who can keep up with him. I may only be 25, but even now I'm finding it hard to find a woman who can keep up with me. I know it sounds egotistical, because it implies I'm all of those adjectives I used to describe Rollins, but I have been getting a much better insight into who I am, and quite frankly there are A LOT worse things I could end up being like than Rollins. To me, Rollins is the man. He knows who he is (which is something I think very few people can honestly say), and he's not afraid to lay it all out on the stage for ya. Sort of like "this is me, love it or hate it.... I honestly don't give a fuck because I love who I am."
The second thought that popped into my head on my hour plus drive home had to do with the crowd. For this particular show a cute girl with a pierced nose and chin sat to my right, and to my left was a lesbian couple, with the cute one having a pierced lip. The crowd was mostly, probably all, white, which led me to question, was this a cultural event for me? I'm white, and the crowd was white, but the normal people I run with are not white. To most of those people in the crowd, going to see Poison Pen would have been a huge shock to the system, a change from the norm. For me seeing Pen is normal. Then again, seeing Rollins is normal. In fact, in the time span of a week and a half my schedule has Rollins spoken word, Mos Def doing jazz, and Sarah Jones' one woman off Broadway show as events I'm attending. So the question that remains in my head is, is it a cultural event if it's all your culture? I consider all of those things I'm going to see things that help define who I am, yet most people consider having "culture" as doing things outside their personal norm. What if one's personal norm is more encompassing? If I enjoy many different things is there less of an opportunity for me to do something that would fall under the heading "cultural?" Or is the labeling of something as "cultural" simply for those who want to feel better than other people based on their own personal tastes? Come to think of it, both answers have some truth to them, and in 2004, in the multicultural society that we live in, there's really no excuse NOT to be doing many different things, all of which will end up defining you, in essence, making them not cultural at all. So after all that typing I guess the answer I've come up with is: the only way something can be a cultural event is in the short term, because in the long term it will help define who you are, and if you try to make yourself sound better than someone else just because of the things you enjoy you're really a schmuck. Oh yeah, and ROLLINS RULES!
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