Synchronicity is a regular thing in my life.
It’s late but I need to get this posted because it tracks coincidences between things I care about.
This morning I listened to the latest Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck Podcast where Mark Manson and his producer Drew Birnie talked insightfully, as they do, about a bunch of important stuff – but what grabbed my attention was the discussion they had around the 41:28 mark: Our culture’s half-century long fixation on self-destruction as something cool and sexy.
Mark: “Why was this a thing? Why was this celebrated?”
Drew: “We did see a lot of that from the Gen-Xers around us, the grunge rock scene and all that.”
Mark then reflects on Kurt Cobain and how, when you’re an adult doing the work of cultivating emotional intelligence, reading about the late idol’s behavior hits different. He saw Cobain as “the most insufferable, just unbearably unhealthy person…” He adds the caveat that Cobain’s artistry is still worthy of the hype, but expands this evaluation to include Nirvana’s peers.
“Not just him, but all of those bands back then. Just profoundly unhealthy; mentally unhealthy, emotionally unhealthy – actively destroying themselves and then being celebrated for it. And on top of that they’re all like 20 years old and have no life experience. It’s not hard to see why so much of that ended tragically. But then even the tragic ending was kind of celebrated and held up.”
Mark says he doesn’t have a point to make about any of this, but he does kind of conclude that the 90s were a perfect example of how there weren’t any real threats or concerns in the world, so we created them for ourselves.
Yesterday Loudersound.com reposted an article from Classic Rock 199, June 2014. It was an interview with Soundgarden for the 20th anniversary of their hit album Superunknown – one of the first hard rock albums I fell in love with and have cherished for the last three decades. Today marks its 30th anniversary release.
I just finished reading the article today, but before I listened to the Subtle Art Podcast this morning, I had already read this quote from Chris Cornell, explaining the rumors of his heavily drinking throughout the recording process.
“There is the thing of making things as difficult for yourself as you can. You still triumph, but if there’s no impediments in the way then sometimes you don’t really get a sense of achievement out of it. So making things difficult for ourselves was definitely something that we did.”
The opening track of another era-defining masterpiece, The Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails (which also celebrates its 30th goddamn anniversary today) is entitled “Mr. Self Destruct.” Unlike my beloved Chris Cornell, Trent Reznor has survived his mental health misadventures. I love the shit out of this message he put out on their website today.
Essentially: Please don’t fucking destroy yourselves despite how hot I made it sound back in the day.
Like Mark, I’ve been wondering about this fascination with the urge to destroy ourselves through toxic beliefs and behaviors. We’re gradually awakening but for many of us it feels woven into the fabric of who we are. I’ve addressed fellow former edgelords in a previous post about this. It’s a very dark and sticky part of my identity that I struggle with daily.
But identity is a construct, isn’t it? Have I just been holding onto it because I subscribe wholesale to the superficial aesthetic of it all? I’m afraid the answer is yes. I have absurdly believed it to be the edge that would imbue my “deEP aNd coMPLex” personality with something others could “revere,” to borrow Mark Manson’s observation.
Then again, I have also been looking forward to death since before I even knew what suicide was, and that was well before I fell under the cultural influence of these artists already across the event horizons of black holes within their own personalities.
I don’t have a solution except to keep pushing forward, trying to make myself useful. I’ll close this with a final synchronicity.
Today I was looking for a CD to spin in my car since it stopped connecting to my phone’s Bluetooth. I found a compilation I had burned in 2004 that would hold me over on my way to pick up an order from Subway. It turned out I had placed the order at the wrong store, so as I was driving to the correct restaurant, I was surprised to hear I had burned “Superman’s Dead” by Our Lady Peace. The song has a refrain that goes, “The world is a subway,” and there I was, traveling between Subways.
I never said synchronicity contains profoundly valuable meaning in every instance. Sometimes the Universe throws out goofy coincidences because fuck you, that’s why.
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