I like the sound of babies crying. Before I get put on some sort of serial killer watch list, let me explain. When tiny newborn babies cry, they are trying with all of their might to make sound– to draw attention to themselves, to stir the sea with a teaspoon. And the result isn’t all that impressive: they hardly make a sound at all. That vulnerability and ambition is rare and honest. It’s our first attempt at individuality and significance, and for that reason, I think the sound of babies crying is endearing.
In some ways, it’s the way we all live our lives. Increasingly available niche fame dominates the Internet– she’s the Angelina Jolie of highly-filtered coffeehouse Instagram, he’s the Floyd Mayweather of French amateur BMX. As we try to define ourselves– a process once lovingly referred to as coming-of-age– we increasingly focus on branding and re-branding ourselves. But adolescence is not a company in need of advertising and people are not flat. Personalities do not accomodate to the lowest common denominator.
This search for an identifiable and powerful personal brand renders reality clichè: everything has been done before and nothing is memorable, therefore nothing is worthwhile. As we, the generation of special snowflakes, age, we conceal under professional guise the naturally awkward process of self-discovery and so dies the notion of nuance. We see each other in black and white and empathy for the juvenile experiences and struggles of others is lost. Our stories have been told and told and so it is hard to see others as anything more than children playacting at a narrative not of their own wit.
This is not a new conundrum. When Shakespeare invented thousands of words and several genres, he told in brief or in sketch the general stories of most of our lives. Somewhere out in the world is a story of a child preternaturally obsessed with death who grew tall like a willow tree too early and ran off to see the world, with mixed results. This is the long and the far too short of my story, but it doesn’t rob my of my individuality or my experiences of their validity. I think in one of the Traveling Pants novels— lowbrow entertainment to be sure– one of the girls goes to Italy (maybe Greece). It’s not a new story; I’m going anyway. We strip ourselves of joy and discovery when we flatten experiences to fit a narrow stereotype and thus devalue them.
When we call ourselves or others “basic”, “hipster” or any number of other neo-stereotypes, we passively agree to the depreciation of the individual. The multitude of diversity is why we live; without it, we advance in the path of least resistance meaninglessly as nothing more than nameless consumers. Live your life unabashadly and let the story write (and read) itself.
anything for a joke 