Identity Lost

The demand for recognition without qualification.

I've given up watching YouTube videos of amazing eight-year-old guitarists that make me want to chop up my instrument and use it to supplement my heating regime. It's just not worth the time - or the pain.

At the same time, I can't help but wonder what life would have been like had I just started guitar lessons six years earlier - and stuck with them.

Both of these actions are exercises in futility. Nothing will come of either of them, so my best bet is to put down the damn phone and just go play my guitar.

If only life were so simple.

Anyone who is known for anything, is known for what they've done. No one has ever been famous for simply being. Unless of course, they're some crazy freak like the Elephant Man, or Robert Wadlow, the tallest man in the world. Those guys didn't have to do anything to become famous, but then again, no one was trying to imitate them either.

Robert Wadlow, not quite as long as a train, but you get the point.

Now everyone wants to be famous. A recent survey found that 54% of Generation Z want to become “influencers”, whatever the hell that is.

Well, alrighty then. At least they have a goal. I guess. I mean, it's better than sitting in your parents’ basement playing video games all night long, right? But really, if they're influencing anyone, then by definition, that means they must actually be doing something.

But what about those that don't have something they can do well enough to get the eyeballs? Well it turns out, there's something for them as well.

These days if you can't be famous based on accomplishments alone, guess what? You can now be famous simply for being different than everyone else. Enter IDENTITY.

Ah yes, identity. We all have one, many of us have several. My identity revolves around who I am to my family - a husband, a father, a son, etc. I also identify as a musician, because I've played guitar for most of my life.

Another identity I have concerns what I do for work in the summer, which is building cool stuff in people's back yards. All of these are my identities. Some are more constant than others, but they're all a big part of who I am and this is how I’d like to be remembered because I feel these are important accomplishments. Also, I have managed to become somewhat famous in my own house - at least for the first couple on the list.

Here are some things that are also part of my identity that I had nothing to do with: the colour of my skin, my European ancestry, my family history, the way I perceive the world.

These are all legit as well, but no one who knows me or even knows of me, thinks of me in these terms. They might know that my Dad was an awesome guy, but that would be because of what he did, and it wouldn't necessary mean they think the same of me. Same with my ideas of the world. The ideas may be accurate or they may be ridiculous, but the only way anyone would even care about it is if these ideas somehow affected their lives. As in, the stuff that I do because of these ideas.

Europeans in North America take a lot of flack these days simply for being here, even though it has nothing to do with anything they've done personally. This is not to let our ancestors off the hook for some of the nasty stuff they did - but that’s on them, not us.

Basically, I don’t expect anyone to respect me based on anything I was born into. Nor do I feel the need to assume any responsibility (or apologize) for those things - be they good or bad.

Now, there's a substantial difference between these two sets of identities I own. The first one consists of things I've done, and titles I've earned, while the second group are things that were given to me by my parents, or they just exist in my mind.

In this world (specifically the “developed” world, or first world countries), one should expect to be allowed to do anything he/she wants to do, and attempt to be anything he/she wants to be, provided it's not harming someone. What one should not expect is to gain some sort of title without demonstrable proof of having earned that title. In other words - don't call yourself something that only exists in your mind.

I was recently introduced to the term "flexitarian" which apparently means someone who is mainly a vegetarian but sometimes eats meat. All this time I thought the word "omnivore" already covered that but I guess it doesn't sound quite as hip and it probably doesn't get you nearly as many points in Hollywood either. It's a lot like getting a promotion at work that involves a new name plate on your desk with a fancier title, but no raise in pay.

And there was much rejoicing…

I actually find this to be quite an ingenious gig. I mean, think of the cred you can get simply by aligning yourself with someone else's idealism while taking no responsibility for your own ideals - or even having any ideals. It's totally a win-win. If cred is all you're after.

I'm a proud lefty, and there's a significant amount of cred that goes with that, simply because there are fewer of us than there are of those other guys and we're well represented in the arts (which means there are a lot of famous southpaws, relatively speaking).

The thing is, I had no choice in the matter. I was “assigned it at birth”, as they say. When I picked up my very first crayon, it didn't take me long to figure out which hand worked better. Writing with a pen in highschool meant I often ended up with smeared ink on the page and stains on my left hand (and don't even get me started on the scissor and binder thing). When I learned how to throw a ball, again it was perfectly natural to use my left arm. I never really thought much about it until I began playing street hockey with my friends. I didn't own a stick, so I ended up borrowing one from my right handed friends. It didn't work to use it as a lefty so I had to learn to shoot right. Same deal when I went to my first guitar lesson. When I walked in, I immediately picked up a left handed guitar assuming that my natural inclinations and identity would be respected, but oh, nooo, no, no, no! When my instructor found out that I had never, ever played anything on a guitar before, he immediately said something like, "Kid, if you don't already know how to play that thing, then I'm gonna teach you the RIGHT way to do it." Incidentally, that ended up being the most valuable guitar lesson I've ever had. You can read about my musical southpaw adventures if you like in this piece.

So now what? I can already feel my special status as a lefty oozing away. I suppose if I were to take a cue from the main newsmakers of the day, I should probably coin a new term. Like maybe, X-handed or something. That would most definitely ensure my status as a unique creature, since I'm not fully ambidextrous either. Then maybe I could create a new day of recognition called X-handers Day. Even better, I could call myself “Trans-handed” since who really knows where I'm heading with this anyway? Am I left-handed? Am I right-handed? Do I even call these things “hands”? What's really going on here? The fact is, it doesn't really matter, because at least it would keep the attention on me and then all that normal stuff that I’ve always done could now be celebrated for its genius and uniqueness. More elevation of the mundane to extraordinary status.

If, by some miracle, you haven't already surmised where I'm heading with this, then let me just say how I'm reminded of that relatively new attention-grabbing crowd with the interminable crying for recognition over what are really just odd preferences. You know who I mean. Like, who cares if you're a man that likes to dress like a woman? No one is saying you can't, and even if most people think it's weird, the only time they'd really care about it is if you try to force them to refer to you as something you obviously are not, or possibly if you show up to teach your shop class with humongous fake breasts and saucer-sized fake nipples that hang down to your waist.

You want to invent your own language with new words that purport to describe your own particular nuance of someone else's preference? Fine, have at 'er. Get together with your little club and speak it all day long if you want to, but don't be surprised if the majority of people aren't really all that interested in learning it with you. And remember, just because people think it's stupid, that shouldn't stop you from doing it if that's what you really want to do. And just because you think it's not, that doesn't mean everyone else should agree with you.

These days even gays and lesbians are considered troglodytes by Trans standards. The gay rights movement has done well to gain the rights they have and I applaud them for that, since they were actually forbidden by law to do relatively normal stuff, like get married and be recognized as a couple, among other things. Whether you or I agree with their lifestyle choices or not is completely beside the point. At least they’re honest about who they are and they're not demanding that everyone refer to them as something other than what we know they are. And because of that, it's really none of our business anyway. That kind of honesty seems to be non-existent in the Trans community.

Some people make a big deal about other people's “rights” these days - as in the overused, “Your right to extend your fist” analogy. I like to say it this way:

Your right to claim a title ends with your capacity to demonstrate it. And also with my capacity to understand what the hell you're even talking about.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to discount anyone's lived experience here, although now that I've mentioned it, let me also say how utterly ridiculous that term is. It fits right in with what we're talking about, because everyone has their own experience, but now some people also have “lived experience”.

I imagine it works kind of like this:

You have experience? Well, I have LIVED experience. Obviously much more valid than just your regular experience because, you know, it's got two words instead of just one. So on that note, I'll see your regular experience and raise you my lived experience.

It's these times when you’ve really got to know when to hold 'em…

I've got a few things that I've learned how to do reasonably well in my life and it's taken my entire life to figure it out, but I'm still not going to sit here and demand recognition for them. If I get it, great. If not, I'm still going to keep on doing them, and trying to be the best husband and father and whatever else that I can possibly be right now. Same with my job. I try to do it well, and if people notice that and say something, great, but when I mess up and do something shitty - guess what? I get to find out about that too. Nothing is free.

On the odd weekend when I attempt to do plumbing in my house, that always tends to get me some recognition from my family. Usually they all just migrate to the other side of the house and try to tune out the litany of curse words coming from the bathroom. Okay, so it's not precisely the kind of recognition I want, but at least I don't try to make them believe I'm actually a plumber trapped in a musician's body. And just to clarify, I still do the odd plumbing job around here, even if I do it poorly. It works because no one in this house is under any illusions about who I am, and a certain amount of honesty is expected.

Like I said, you can be anything you want here with the right amount of effort, but don't expect rational people to take you seriously when the totality of your evidence exists solely in your mind.