Punk Rock & Flannery O’Connor – The Relationship Between Your Values and Your Betrayal of Those Values
Last night, the wife and I watched this video by the Punk Rock MBA on YouTube. We watch a lot of his videos, pulling different things from our different perspectives. As usual, I agreed with most everything Finn had to say. That led me to showing her this TedTalk by Paul Mahern on having a neutral mind in a world full of opinions. I thought this was important for two reasons: one, I’m making my next record with Paul and I’m sure she was curious about what he looked and sounded like, that sort of thing that most of us would be curious about, but two, and more importantly, it related to the disconnect Finn pointed out, and I think is worth recognizing and exploring.
This idea is in the public consciousness every day; however, it is misunderstood at best, or lied about at worst. For example, when I say that I am proud of my country, or proud to be an American, most people would assume me to mean that I approve of everything my government is doing or has done, since 1776. There’s no thinking, there’s no context or criticism, just blind, foolish patriotism. However, when I say I’m proud to be an American, what I mean is that I am proud of and I love the values that we were founded upon. I am more aware than most that we have consistently failed to live up to those values, I am merely stating that we need to change, our values do not.
You can apply this to many other things as well, but for the topic at hand, it’s punk rock. Punk is, to borrow from Finn, bullshit. I’ve talked about instances of this before, but as humans do, we’ve taken noble values and pursuits and then tried to control and manipulate them for our own benefit, not the benefit of others. It’s why forty-seven years after it was released, and thirty-two years after I first heard it, I can put on Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols and still be as excited as I was when I first heard it. I imagine it’s similar to a Christian scholar reading a first century copy of a book from the New Testament, you’re going back to something a pure as you’re ever going to find it on this plane of existence.
Where does Flannery O’Connor come in?
She comes in where good artists always come in: she pulls the curtain back and sees the Wizard for who he really is.
What I’ve always found compelling about Southern Gothic literature is that it’s more realistic than realism. By that I mean, it’s a more honest view of the heart, or soul, of man. No, there are not killers lurking behind every corner. There is a force that keeps us from being as bad as we could be, but they’re not oblivious to the fact that we could be that bad.
Finn does a great job of pointing things out in regard to punk, so I suggest you watch that video for context, but as Mass Giorgini and Larry Livermore discussed on Jughead’s Basement a few years back, punk isn’t counter-culture, it’s a subculture. This doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the music, or the community, or what have you, but love it for what it is, not for what it pretends to be. What Flannery and others get, in their respective cultures, is that any group of humans will screw up royally all the while pontificating about the goodness of what they’re doing. There are certain people or groups today who will tell you this thing or that thing need to be destroyed, but have you ever heard them tell you how they plan to rebuild? No. It’s easy to be caught up in something that tells you that some outside, uncontrollable force is 100% to blame for your life not being how you want it to be. It’s not to say that outside forces don’t move you, only that you get to choose how you respond to those outside forces. And that part is not so easy.
Punk didn’t give me my values, but it validated some of them. I was already questioning authority, I already thought I was being lied to, I already wanted to be myself and not what others wanted me to be, and if you weren’t going to let my band play at your venue, I’ll put on my own show. However, I quickly discovered I didn’t like the right bands, didn’t have the right hair, I still liked other types of music – I wasn’t punk enough. Which disappointed me at the time, I wanted to live on the Island of Misfit Toys, not on another island of conformity. However, much like I believe in the values America was founded upon, I believe in the values punk was founded upon, and I will keep living by those values regardless of the cultural winds that blow around me. People perverting those values don’t diminish the values themselves, they simply illuminate our inability to live up to our own standards.
As Flannery wrote in 1960, “I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted.” This is an important distinction to make. At the end of his video, Finn quotes Larry Livermore’s last column for MaximumRocknRoll, where he compares punk to “born again Christians”. He says that like Christians, nothing can be questioned anymore. While I would agree with his statement culturally, as a “born again Christian” myself, I would contextualize that to state that while I don’t question the Bible, I do question my understanding of it, particular translations of it and I question pastors and churches – essentially anything human. You have to question anything human. You have to ask yourself, does someone have something to gain by doing or saying what they’re doing? Does this align with what I know to be true? And furthermore, it’s okay to admit you don’t understand something, then pursue more information before forming an opinion or belief.
The South being the Bible Belt and saying, “it’s all Jesus Freaks down there” or “Christians are all this way”, that doesn’t mean they’re Christ-centered, it just might mean they’re Christ-haunted. Saying I’m a punk and therefore I am this that and the other… are you? Are you really? Or are you maybe a little more flawed and more like your enemy than you care to admit? I think seeing things for what they truly are and where you fit, or don’t fit, into them is really a pre-requisite of personal growth and of great art.
You owe it to yourself, if no one else, to look behind the curtain and into your own heart as honestly as possible.