My definition

by RAF KATIGBAK

What defines us? Do our actions make us what we are, or is it who we are that dictates our actions? Are we actually the sum total of everything we have experienced since birth? Is it our religion? Morality? Conscience? Language? Emotions? Or is it a never-ending flux of all these things and more, acting-reacting as some sort of nebulous ever-shifting constellation? The older I get, the more the idea of identity eludes me.

Of course if you asked my 14-year-old self “what defines you?” it’d be simple. I’d just hand you my jean jacket and go, here man. This is me.

I loved my jean jacket. I remember it was some no-name brand like Rodee-o or Rangler (note the absence of the W) and that it was unevenly acid-washed in my friend Kyle’s bathroom sink. Back then, it wasn’t what you did that defined who you were, but what you listened to. Like some kind of stinky blue and white astral chart, you could look at my jacket and chart my personal emotional growth over teen-dom. Perhaps it was a rebellion from the girly Wham!-style pop groups my four sisters had in constant autoreverse in their boomboxes. Or maybe it was my angst-ridden response to living in single-parent-dom. But all my bands seemed to be defined by one word: heavy.

Over at the top left front shoulder was my first introduction into heaviness; a patch half-assedly sewn on with the two words Black Sabbath in the wavy letters of their Master of Reality album. Clockwise from there, it followed onto my second obsession band, Led Zeppelin’s Zoso symbols carefully ironed onto the right shoulder. I felt these two things were adequate cultural signifiers that said to the rest of my classmates, “Hey, I’m not like you, I like weird music that your dad is into and I have a weird basement with red lights and creepy wood panelling.”

At one point, I met a girl named Kris. She wore purple Doc Martens and called herself a poet. I guess her work could be described as gothic haikus centering around the notions of “anger” and “being misunderstood” and would almost invariably contain the words “blood,” “torn,” “pain,” would often rhyme the word “heart” with “apart,” and would usually end with the word “why,” followed by about a million question marks and exclamation points. My obsession with her and my newfound sensitivity opened up some space for the Doors and Pearl Jam. Later on, when I was tired of being a pussy and realized that Kris was only into me to get closer to my best friend Chris, the heaviness came back with a vengeance and resulted in a hand-drawn depiction of the spiky Corrosion of Conformity guy and the graphic assault of a Napalm Death badge.

Even though most of the back was taken up with the words “The Cult” painstakingly recreated in permanent marker from the cover of their Electric album, most of the rear of my jean jacket was dedicated to grunge. Some bands that I really liked, like Soundgarden and Nirvana, had a real patch, while others I sort of fancied but was not obsessed with—Alice in Chains, Screaming Trees—would be written in liquid paper. Grunge provided me the outlet to be into heavy stuff but be confused and sort of poetic at the same time.

But the true spirit of my jean jacket remained with one band. On the lower back, scrawled in red puffy paint were the letters GnFnR. Granted there is probably nothing less tough than having something written in puffy paint, but whatever (it looked like blood, okay?). Guns ’n’ Roses’ album Appetite for Destruction defined my high school experience. It was angry and confused and full of sex and obnoxiousness. Sure, I was a full-on nerd, but that didn’t stop me from trying to play the badass. So much did I want to believe it that I cut off the sleeves to go over an ill-fitting thrift store leather jacket, just like Slash. While I didn’t have the balls to wear a silver-buckled top hat (the closest I came was a round British bowler à la Clockwork Orange), I still felt the part and I couldn’t even fathom being friends with people who didn’t feel the same way. If you weren’t into the same music, we couldn’t talk. Oh, you’re into New Kids on the Block? You suck. Spin Doctors? Don’t make me puke.

Eventually I got over it. As I got older, I realized that musical tastes ceased to be such a defining trait. I look back at my hilarious phases—rock, grunge, death metal and confused Asian Arsenio Hall cowboy (don’t ask)—I laugh, but make my peace knowing that it was just a way to help understand the world, to relate to others, and to find my own path to self-discovery. So what defines me? Maybe it’s not that I listen to any one type of music, but in the end it’s that I still really, really hate the Spin Doctors.

Riff-Raff@sympatico.ca