Thankfully, the irony of hosting an academic-style panel discussion about punk rock was not lost on the directors of Open Space. Before the speakers took their seats, four bottles of Fiji water stood in formation on top of the conference table, bam-bam-bam-bam, and the amps played the kind of elegant classical music usually airing at fundraising events and dads' company parties – tongues were subtly, but intentionally, in cheeks.
It's important to note this, because before the event there had been a lot of pooh-poohing and stance-taking surrounding to the whole idea. Before the discussion began, there were a lot of (lighthearted) jokes being made about pouring the Fiji water onto the amps and throwing beer cans at the speakers in order to save punk from the stranglehold of academic discourse. Many in the audience were wary, and I have to admit that I myself had calculated about a 50-50 chance of the whole thing being really annoying, so to see that the hosts were acknowledging this by making fun of themselves (just a little bit) was an immediate good sign.
The three speakers were Alec MacKaye, influential force in the '80s D.C. hardcore scene and member of Untouchables and The Faith; Matt Papich, founder of Wildfire Wildfire and member of Ecstatic Sunshine and also, I am now convinced, some kind of guru; and Peter Quinn, founding member of Creative Capitalism and respected supporter of the Baltimore arts community.
Both the moderator, Amy Peterson, and Peter prefaced their introductions to themselves by saying that they didn’t feel qualified to really be speaking on punk and that they weren't entirely sure why they'd been asked, which seemed fitting given the usual reluctance to self-identify as punk and then to have to back it up with the laundry-list of bands, dates, and ideological points. It seemed an appropriate opening.
Only three "official" questions got asked before the discussion started to include audience commentary and response-to-response, and as speakers hashed out ideas and molded thoughts a few threads began to emerge. While the actual conversation jumped from topic to topic, often back- or sidetracking, a couple of points kept coming up, and it's these that I want to explore.
The first question, not surprisingly, was "what is punk?" Among other things, punk was described as a reaction to mainstream culture – it arose in direct opposition to, not in spite of, the perceived hollowness and hypocrisy of capitalism. While this could be said of any counter-culture movement (hence "counter"-culture, duh), punk is different because it has a sense of humor and self-mockery built into itself, something that may also help explain its longevity. While it's pretty tempting to deny this description outright by recollecting every self-righteous, liberty-spiked, decidedly not-self-mocking asshole we knew in high school, it does seem easier to imagine a self-deprecating punk than, say, a self-deprecating hippie. This may explain why punk has had so much staying power: instead of being weakened by a new generation's mockery, punk can absorb and celebrate it.
Of course, once anything mocks itself enough you have to start wondering where the essence and substance of it lies; if the whole thing is just a joke, then what's the point at all? Maybe it isn’t that punk can become endlessly self-deprecating, maybe it's that the definition of "punk" is fluid enough that the word can mean whatever is required of it by any given generation. Matt suggested that the word "punk" is useful not in spite of its constantly fluctuating nature, but because of it.
Alec pointed out that punk, from the start, was supposed to devour itself. Destruction seemed built into the movement from its inception, the way that a young rebel will tattoo his knuckles as insurance against a briefcase-and-bowtie adulthood – mature, seasoned punk should be an oxymoron, and intentionally so. Which brings us to a question that was shocking in its absence: is punk dead? Nobody went there during the discussion, but from the general tone and the way things were phrased, the base assumption seemed to be that punk is alive and well, just…different. I dunno. Personally, I decided that punk was dead sometime around 10th grade, but I was only ever in it for the fashion and the cigarettes, anyway. I have no authority here. I guess that calling yourself a Punk today is like calling yourself a Hippie: it does mean something in a contemporary context, it just doesn't mean what it used to, and, at the end of the day, it usually just means that you're an asshole.
But I digress. Adam Lempel asked an interesting question at one point that, regretfully, was never really answered: does punk have to exist in opposition to something? What would happen if a majority of Americans declared themselves punks and started eating each other's leftovers? Does punk define itself by what it's not, or is it something self-sustaining that could exist in any world? Does it defeat itself by winning? Alec suggested at one point that punk has stayed alive for so long because it taps into something elemental and universal, some human undercurrent that exists with or without a system to bash. The jury is still out.
One thing everyone agreed on is that punk allows you to do things that you otherwise couldn't. You don't have to know how to play the bass to play the bass. You don't have to have money to look fly or have a good time. In this way, punk is freeing.
Punk also frees you to have open chunks of time. Suddenly you aren't expected to have a schedule filled with money-making strategies and career-advancement moves. All three panelists relayed memories of, as Alec put it, "standing around somewhere until someone told us not to, then going somewhere else and standing there for a while instead." Matt referred to "wasting time as an ethos." This ability to do nothing creates "open spaces" in your personal space and time, which you can fill in however you want – or not. These open spaces are undervalued in our culture, where ambition and achievement take precedent over pretty much everything else, and an appreciation of downtime is rarely differentiated from straight laziness.
One of the most evocative topics was a mixture of "why doesn't your generation [i.e. my generation] do anything/how is punk different now/what happens next?" Peter broached the subject by asking the audience, which was mostly MICA students, why we never do anything to change the world. Obviously the audience wasn't really having this, and he "clarified" by saying "no, no, I don’t mean you guys, I mean the rest of your generation," which infuriated me so much that I almost cramped my face from eyebrow-cocking. He distinguished the "creative class" in the room from the "rest of Generation Y," as though being a MICA student automatically makes you more socially-aware and proactive. It's the same kind of binary thinking that the two older panelists expressed over and over in their descriptions of punk as an oppositional force. They seemed to view the world as Us vs. Them, Us being the creative artsy-fartsy alterna-crew; Them being the square, Ugg-wearing, TV-brainwashed dumb masses of dumbasses. This kind of mentality seems old-fashioned, and Peter, after giving it more thought, came to the same conclusion himself.
Everyone ended up agreeing that in this day and age, you're allowed to combine any roles and traits that you want. In fact, if you limit yourself to one subculture – if, say, you only listen to hardcore, and only wear hardcore clothes, and only go to hardcore shows, and refuse to participate in any activity that isn't hardcore – you're seen as narrow-minded and immature. This seemed to be the major difference between Gen X and Gen Y conceptions of punk: to the old folks, punk is about being anti; to the kids, punk is just one more element to mix into your philosophical and stylistic repertoire.
Of course, that begs the question of whether you're allowed to be just a little bit punk. Isn’t part of the idea that if you don't go balls-to-the-wall with it, then you're just a poser? And once punk becomes so ill-defined, does the word really connote anything at all?
At the end of the day, I think punk is probably dead. And if it's already dead, then academic discussion isn’t going to make it any deader. That's what I would say to the many people who refused to attend the discussion on principle.
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