I Don't Want Some Pretty Face To Tell Me Pretty Lies

I've been thinking about all of the impressions I give, and how much thought and worry I put into them.

Not just first impressions, although it has been fun to watch the new roommate's face as she tries to navigate the murky waters of my past personalities only to discover the contradictory facade that is today's partially actualized M. R. Shurtz, or her soon to be anagrammed pen name, Tzar Hurt-My-Rush.

No, I have been thinking about my daily exchanges, and the great lengths I go to in order to have a stranglehold control on how I present myself to oldest friends and newest acquaintances alike.

The fact that I've been ruminating on this won't surprise any of you. I've made a joyous career out of applying my obsessively analytical brain to the study of other's reactions to their environment, and to my presence in their habitat especially. The fact that my favorite movie in high school (and a recently revisited obsession) was "SLC Punk!"--a manifesto on the culture of the outsider and its effects on society--is also not an accident.

So why even address it anymore? The subject should be worn out by now, there's only so many ways I can make neon signs that say "Don't pigeon-hole me, you close-minded automaton!"  And you're right, that bitter diatribe is tired at best and meaningless at worst. Instead, what I've been focusing on is the somewhat more subtle and definitely more willing changes I make in order to soften/accentuate the impressions I make on my peers, families, and peoples with authority.

I, despite my clinging to my band t-shirts, am exceptionally adept at this type of self-reinterpretation/censor. An example that comes to mind is when I compiled a calendar of my favorite poems as a Christmas present for my parents. I know, I'm adorable. And broke, but whatever. A conscious decision I had to make while putting together that selection of poetry was eliminating roughly 74% of my favorites and replacing them with what I considered to be lesser cousins to the greats.

Why, you ask? Because the subject matter of most of my favorite poems is of a fairly dark, melancholy nature. And I knew that not only were my parents not of a temperament that would enjoy those poems, but more significantly, if I included even a handful of verse that was written from a negative perspective, my parents would attribute those themes to my mental state and would worry/fret/bother me with frequent visits to snap me out of it.

Let me emphasize, those are not my favorite poems because I am perpetually in a deep dank dark dungeon of depression. They're my favorite poems because they are well-written monuments to some of humanity's strongest emotions. I believe that the greatest amount of trash and genius has been written about love and despair because those two themes are what pierce us to the soul, and drive individuals to find an outward way to express it. This applies to poetry, music, art, film, sky diving, any medium of self-expression.

In relation to this, I also censor myself on an almost daily basis. When I'm too lazy to think of a witty comment for facebook, I generally choose a song lyric fragment and post that. Some are meaningful; some are arbitrary, all from music I love. I have almost never allowed myself to post lyrics from my very favorite songs, for fear of misinterpretation or a bad impression.

Some of them are very angry, most of them are incredibly romantic, and none of them are about situations I am currently in. But I'm not a creature who really needs music lyrics to speak to me in the humdrum, literal narrative sort of way. If all my song lyrics were a play-by-play of my daily emotions and events, it would be the flattest, most non-committal changeless bunch of hooey you ever did see.

Songs become my favorite because an artist or lyricist's message was so sharply in focus to them that it reaches out and grabs me. I wish I was less afraid to share those moments, but I have this self-imposed paranoia of leaving the impression that I'm 'emotional.'

How ridiculous is that? Of course I'm emotional. I'm part of the human race, we have souls and communication and history progresses because we have more than the basic animal instincts to feed and procreate.

Well, most of us do.

So why on earth should this be something I shy away from so resolutely? Couldn't really tell you. It'd be easy to blame it on our post-modern 21st century cynicism, where no display of feeling is real or without cliche unless $50 million is spent on post production. But I sometimes sit in fearful contemplation that my abhorrence of personal display has a lot to do with a very singular disconnect that I have within.

On an unrelated note, school is incredible. It's also facing me off like a prize-winning sumo wrestler, testing to see if it can smother me and remain the undefeated champion. But I've carbed up and am ready to roll with it. Ewww, roll with it. Bad choice of words for this piece of imagery.

I will be victorious.

Also, I guarantee my next post will be frivolous fluff in an effort to slyly distract you from this post.