#idk why I wrote this Im reaaaally goin thru it lol

[bimbinis]

I watched this video once by a dude called Timbah on Toast about his experiences with dubstep music and how formative it was in his life to be part of a community of people all united by their shared love for a music genre and it made me really sad bc I never had that and moreover I feel like I could have had that.

When I was 11 I discovered indie music through, I am not kidding, the SpongeBob Movie soundtrack. I owned (still own) the CD which has a track not actually featured in the movie (worst kind of soundtrack track) called They'll Soon Discover by The Shins, which I liked so much I started looking for more music by The Shins. They quickly became my favorite band.

This was also around the time I got a secondhand mp3 player as a gift from a family friend, which was the first music listening device I had just for me. Prior to that, most of the music I listened to was shit my siblings already/also liked (like Disney star acts), also due to them having received mp4 players from my parents but not me. Now for the first time in my life, I had a favorite music artist that was something that belonged to just me.

Through The Shins I found out about a bunch of related bands. There was this website that was like, a pseudo radio thing that random songs within a genre or a range of similarity and that's how I discovered Arcade Fire and The Decemberists. There were a few others like Band of Horses and Death Cab For Cutie but they never really did it for me. It was mostly the first two and occasionally the 3rd one. Through my brother I also discovered Of Monsters and Men and The Naked and Famous, which didn't count as "belonging to me" like the other ones, but they did add to my indie repertoire.

At that point I was ripe for joining some sort of indiehead community. The problem is, there wasn't any I could join. At the time I didn't have a good grasp of English to join gringo discussions about it and when I tell you indie was completely unheard of in Brazil (at the very least among my 11-14 yo peers and old geezer teachers) I mean it. Arcade Fire at least from what I know played at Lollapalooza a few times but The Shins literally never ever had any success here. As I mentioned earlier, I had to get their CD imported from the US, and it was my least favorite album too. Unfortunately it was also the cheapest so it was the one I went with.

It doesn't help that my only reference for how to discuss your favorite band was my sister who fangirled hard for Paramore at the time. And like, her favorite band was a former garage band comprised of goofy, pretty 20 somethings who started it as friends in highschool. My favorite band was comprised of seasoned industry professionals with no personal ties to each other hired by a 40 year old father of one with a receding hairline. I'm pretty sure most of their fans have always been other white dads whose vinyl collections were started at the time vinyl was the norm rather than vintage. So you may understand how I felt a little lost with the lack of fandomizing discussion around them.

By the time indie had a breakthrough in Brazil, I had already more or less given up and moved on to other things. The Shins hadn't put out an album in 3 years and they wouldn't until after 2 more. Same thing for Arcade Fire, not helped by the fact I was never a fan of Reflektor. Of Monsters and Men, which did actually make it kind of big in Brazil, came out with an album in 2015 that left me underwhelmed. It's hard to maintain enthusiasm all by yourself like that in such a dire context.

I think most of the things I continued to listen to (thanks to 8tracks) were still described as indie, but they were clearly very different from my original faves. And regardless, I didn't like any of the things that did make it big. I always thought Arctic Monkeys was overrated and I refuse to accept that people call fucking Coldplay and Imagine Dragons indie. I know indie eventually became the tv commercial genre anyway but everything those fucking "bands" have ever put out has been basically ready made car commercial jingles.

At the time my favorite band had now become twenty one pilots, and when they had a big break in Brazil I got really excited at the prospect of finally having a local community of people who liked the same music I liked, but then I got so ruthlessly mocked for liking them that I subsequently grew to despise them. After that my favorite band was Mother Mother, but by then I had lost interest in finding a community of people with similar taste in music to me. I just resigned myself to being a loner in my corner with my music taste I wasn't sharing with anyone anymore bc I didn't wanna be mocked again.

Then for the next 6 years I proceeded to avoid discussions of musical preferences and just started saying I listen to a little bit of everything until that turned out to be considered cringe too and I just started saying I just listen to basic bitch shit so people can't accuse me of that first. Now at almost 22 I'm desperately trying to figure out what my taste in music is, both feeling self conscious that I don't even understand enough about music to give a straight answer about what I like when my taste is too basic to be this undecided while also being self conscious that I care about this at all.

I kinda wish I'd stuck to my guns at 11. Sometimes I feel like that was the age I peaked at. I did everything with such earnestness and enthusiasm, with such a lack of pretension that I can't find in me today. I listened to music I liked bc I liked it, be it the SpongeBob Best Day Ever album (which I also owned) that I was considered too old to like by my peers, be it my favorite band whose other fans were all middle aged white Americans. I read any books I wanted without worrying that they were either too childish or too pretentious to be reading and without worrying that I didn't have enough time on this earth to read everything I "should" read. I drew the things I wanted to and was often proud of the results and whenever I wasn't I just drew them again and again until I was.

There's a lot of reasons why I'm glad I'm an adult. I'm really not asking to go back to 11 when I had just gotten enrolled into military school and the 4 years ahead of me in there seemed like they were gonna last an eternity. But sitting down here now in front of this hospital smoking alone worrying about everything I have to take care of in my life, and how after those things there'll be more things to take care of, I kinda wish I could feel like I did when I listened to The Shins back then. Like when I listened to Gone For Good under the pouring rain and the girl I would find out I was in love with tried to get me to come inside the school building so I wouldn't catch a cold. Like when I listened to Those to Come while watching the sunrise after a night of insomnia. Like when I sang Australia with my cousin playing the guitar to it. Like when I listened to They'll Soon Discover on the way home from school in the bright sunlight and thought "today is my day".

Also I burned my thumb with my lighter just now and it hurts like a motherfucker