Undermine

For a while now, I have been considering my high school period and the seminal moments therein, specifically, the period of time where I was attracted to punk rock. I loved punk rock and the idea of punk rock on multiple levels. The first and most obvious was the immediate counter cultural aesthetic I conveyed. It is not that I would have been unable to conform to normative fashion trends in the sense that I was poor or did not "get it," rather I simply found no interest in looking the same as others. The next was political in the sense that punk rock seemed to encourage a sense of civil unrest and an ostensible quest for questioning. It brought about my eventual and continued resistance to totalitarianism, authoritarianism, colonialism, imperialism and made me aware of activism, social justice, environmentalism, civil rights and advocacy of the "other." Third, it was the total purity of the music. It was angry at the complacency of society and it wanted to be heard. It was loud, fast and full of emotion. It gave me a connection to the few others who liked the same music and were in to some of the same things. However, the most important thing was that it gave me room to be me and to discover myself. There was no funnel of who I should be and what I should do. It let me create art constantly. It allowed me to patronize art. It allowed me to engage in politics and social issues from a young age, and encouraged me doing so. It pushed me to become independent of what society told me I should do and how I should act and think (this does not mean I disregarded all societal norms, merely that if I was in agreement with them, it was of my own volition). For all of this, punk rock, I salute you.