One thing I’ve never been very forward about (partially because I wasn’t very aware of it myself until recently) is my tendency to feel like I have several identities. I don’t necessarily mean specific identities, but I often feel like a melting pot of stereotypes. Stereotypes is a bad way to put it, but it’s close. Some of these identities happen when I’m alone, and some happen when I’m with other people (usually people that I’m not totally comfortable around or fully acquainted with).
I think part of this lies in the fact that I really have a melting pot of interests. Music is the primary one, obviously, but there are many others. I often find myself relating to strangers or new people. I don’t know if this connection is feigned or real, but it’s there, and I guess I sort of use it as a tool to become comfortable with people I don’t know very well. For example, if I’m working with someone who is into cars, I’ll talk on and on about cars with them as if I’m just as obsessed as they are with cars. If I’m talking with someone who aspires to be a hip-hop artist, I’ll talk with them about DJing, beats, and name some of the hip-hop music I listen to. If I’m talking with a construction worker, I’ll relate to them by mentioning how I worked in a warehouse and got laid off. All of these things are true — I am interested in cars (I have a modified one myself), I do listen to some hip-hop and I did used to DJ, and I did work in a warehouse and I was laid off. I don’t know.
And then sometimes when I’m driving I’ll listen to trance music and drive way above the speed limit and I’ll feel like someone who does that all the time. Sometimes I’ll wear a nice button up shirt and dress shoes and make sure my hair isn’t fucked up and I’ll feel like that person. And sometimes I’ll go to the coffeehouse with a bunch of intimidating books and a pad of paper and flip my pen between my fingers and I’ll feel like someone who has important things to study. And, same as with relating to other people — I do enjoy driving fast sometimes and I do enjoy some trance music, I do like wearing button up shirts from time to time and looking presentable, and I do enjoy reading Sartre or studying anthropology. I enjoy all of those things to an extent, and not because I like feeling like someone else. I enjoy them as an individual — those are some of my interests — but sometimes partaking in these interests makes me feel like somebody else, and I can’t help but enjoy that sometimes.
And there are the things that I feel make up me. My primary interests. Making music, writing poetry, traveling, writing in general, going to shows, reading, wearing the clothes that I normally wear, having fucked up hair, blabalblabla. And anyone who I’m comfortable around sees the whole picture. And in some settings I will flaunt the things that make me me. It just depends.
I possess a very strange kind of arrogance. When I’m alone, I don’t think I’m anything special. When I’m with friends or people I care about or people who care about me, I don’t think I’m anything special. But put me in a party and I will feel isolated and immediately begin to think about how much better I am than everyone else. And I’ll think “I don’t need to drink jungle juice and dance and be gregarious and talk about Animal Collective to have a good time — I’m going to go do my own thing and do the things that I care about and am interested in and it will be way fucking better.”
But it’s also strange because I never look at anyone individually out of a crowd and think “that person is lesser than me” — I don’t think that people who don’t share my opinions and views are misinformed or stupid or sheltered. I don’t see myself as better than them in any way. I don’t know.
