ARNAUD

The following words are the result of a wandering which lasted a few months. Throughout this time, I have turned everything over and over. Let's begin with what might tend to be a warning : the following opinions belong to a young man, 26 years old, trying to define a link between adolescence, employment, total change, duties... in that, this article is and will remain the testimony of those few months of wandering, but certainly not a permanent hold. In the months or in the years to come, if we have the opportunity to meet by chance for a show, during a lunch at the job canteen, on the subway escalator, or during a ramble in the mountains, feel free to inform me of my mistakes, and don't be surprised if I appear both myself and its direct opposite.

Sometimes in your life occur some times that make questions so much existing that they become burdensome. Burdensome in the space and the time they fill, more than their real ability to run over the daily routine aftertaste. For several months now, the project, leading to the release of the record you get in your hands, has filled a part of my time and a part of my mind. With a particular place, almost sulfurous, for being the ground of reconsiderings, violent at some times.
I have to yield the facts and to admit that punk no longer takes up as much time in my life as it used to be the case during the last ten years. Or to give more accuracy and realism to the facts, punk no longer takes up as much time of my dream and fantasized life, and occupies a little less time of my physique life.

Since the time I was given the chance to approach this microcosm as motivated as motivating, I had the oppotunity to meet people talking about throwing up the sponge, to give up, and even people who really did it. And I was thinking : « How can you give the brush-off when you have dedicated ten years or even more to your ideas, so much radical and absorbing, and to their accomplisment? ». I really had the impression that it was impossible to cold shoulder, « true 'till death » somehow. Well, I was wrong. Or in an other way, my point of view was very binary and in the end, wrong and simplistic. I make myself clear :

Punk offers a great and huge load of subversive possibilities. Somehow, it has been kind of a home which allowed me to build-up my current personnality, in the continuity of my education, rather militant and concerned. It has been as well the ground for the construction of a certain dogmatism ( probably established by myself since I am doubtful of its real existence ) founded on the basis that there was no possible running than total devotion. But, for a long time now, reality comes back and hits me in the gob. The choices I make for my life are not along the same lines as punk used to be in my mind ( along with its incumbents and its results.) Disregarding points of views, actions, readings quite radical, 99% of my life is unpunk. I had to yield the facts, it took up a long time but now, I can position myself in this framework. I have political beliefs and considerings similar to independent and radical circles, but I am not part of them. I am not an active militant, I am not a 'squater', I don't run a label or a distro, I no longer feel up to writing zines.. and so on. But despite of that, what about giving up? Is this the only solution? Is it right to think I quit a place I have never effectively occupied?

One solution, related to the changes of my binary position, is simply to consider there are various ways to approach and to exercise punk :

It's possible to be entirely dedicated to breaking and total change accomplished at the hands of our dear liberal society. This position demands hard taking and burdensome choices of life for those who adopted it. It must provide very intense outcomes in the daily accomplishments, and feelings of life easily far from the sacral codes of the standardized society. It means as well a kind of disengagement, a kind of distance from the 'usual' life. In that sense, this position appears to me not like a subersive point of view leading to the awareness-raising of the 'masses', but rather like an inner wrestling, almost desperate, braving a stranger world, with which any compromise seems to be impossible. As far as those people are concerned, the point is to help one another, to create a gap which makes them feeling better and free. However, rubbing shoulders with the people living with that kind of position, sometimes reveals close-mindedness, and in my opinion, it's more undergone than desired . I think that living in a closed circuit, meaning a kind of refusal for the unfeeling and minded socialization, inhibits to reach various possibilities. Weird. This prospect seems to be as negative as positive. I'll make myself clear later.

There are various ways to consider punk itself, but one of them attracts my attention in particular. I think it is possible to consider punk as a helpful digression. Not like a great parenthesis lasting for a long time, but rather like the digression which holds you tight until the next one. For some people, involved on different scales in the current society, it is about demeaning oneself, giving oneself well, feeling free, helping other people, but punctually. Like making a meeting in a squat, supporting papersless people, setting up a show, and so on... and then going back to normality. And the question which occurs to me is very simple : is this state of mind so opened to criticism ? Of course, we can think those people are like cowboys or like colonists, influenced by show business. They don't put themself in jeopardy and their coming spoils the efforts of other people. As well, they can be considered as people with a lack of bravery in terms of entire devotion, people quite groping who hesitate at the hands of radical life changes. But, is this such a bad and damaging behaviour ? Why don't we admit that it is hard to quit normality and that it isn't given to everyone ? Why not interpreting this behaviour like a front door, like a bunch of questions, like a desire and a wish, but in a perspective more constructive than demolishing. Can we feel close to punk and total change, and missing the necessary bravery for entire devotion at the same time? Can we consider being a part of the normality, and at the same time giving one's participation «  irregularly » to this total change disregarding the impounding and the misrepresentation of its meaning ?

I don't want to give the impression I reject any binary point of view to eventually creating a new one. It is obvious that there are as much possible ways to consider punk as people to live it. And then there are even people who are not punk, huh ?

And what about my opinion you would say. Anyway, after loads of considerings, it is clear to me that I am part of the second position. That goes without saying I do not reject the first point of view and its members. I owe them a lot and have admiration for their choices.
However, I had to admit those were not my choices. Why did I make the choice to keep distances from total change ? ( since this choice would have been possible ) Actually, it's the question of my arrival into the work environment. So, I don't know if I have been sucked up by cryptocapitalism or if I made a choice with a mature reflexion. But it happened. And maybe I don't care. At the moment I am writting those words, the most important for me is to start undersdanting where is my position. I have started my job as education assistant for two years now. You are exempted of the debate about education and its role in the society, this is not the point. But the true thing is that being an education assistant in a school of Ç educationnal priority È ( I hate this designation but it is necessary to understand ) opened my eyes. To what ? To all the suggestions made by the punk to me in terms of open-mindedness, at which I have never been confronted with. I have started to see teenagers coming from immigrated families, most of them are muslims, refering to their education or religion. And suddenly I had to use the anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti-whatever you want slogans of punk. The white/male/heterosexual/atheist/middle class circle was put to an end. Welcome to the frenchy cultural mosaic, to the cultural prosperity, to the social poverty, to the difference. Welcome too to the sexist clich?s, homophobia or to the body and business cults. But I have shared so much times with those people I first thought highly influenced by the modern society. I have only touched upon the subject with punk. I got to return to my culture, to the concepts which are mine, to the occidental influences of my way of mind. In two years, I've been transformed. I have started smiling again, I've been able to reposition myself, to get a new role, and a handsome bunch of new questions.

Finally, I have realized that everything punk provided to me, and that I could use this as well in the real life, but not inevitably through a radical position and ambit. My points of view are just points of view, debatable, compatible with different ways of life and different ways of considering the world. And I have never felt this actual open-mindedness with punk, or at least my way of living the so-called 'punk'. So yes the way I behave myself with the punk ideas has changed, and as far as I am concerned, for better.
At the beginning of this text, I was saying I have not been able to understand, for many years, how some people could give up with punk, and self-torpedo. But now, I know why. Because in the end, I think that whatever happens, punk « adopted for life or not » changes your life permanently, makes you able to formulate more interesting criticisms of the world. And I have chosen those criticisms to feel more comfortable with my participation into the normality. At last, I no longer lie to myself, I face the person I am. So you can certainly stop with colored vinyls, soulseek abuses and patches to the utmost, songs fast as fuck while staying punk. But maybe just with an other mean. I am not operating my coming-out or writting a farewell letter. Not at all. I'm just trying to comment a position. I still have loads of projects linked to punk, and I strongly believe in them, as much as during the previous years. Moreover, the release in your hands is the result of a collaboration with various and different punks, different in their way of living and considering punk. And it's funny because while I'm questionning my beliefs, I find myself participating to a release more punk than any other one I have done in the past, because it's a collaboration with a lot of people of this community, and more than that, it's a benefit record for two groups of activists.

So, perhaps simply playing music with friends, sharing it with other people through a record, and the attempt to support thanks to a benefit record is something punk. Punk but sporadic and not devolving. A participation, not an adequacy. A possible disgression for young middle-class white heterosexual male. In order to give my two cents, definitely.