Day 12 – I Am An Antichrist
The continuing adventures of “Eric’s Trip Around the Sun”. One final trip with the iPod.
I have always had the mind sight that punk was state of mind rather than a sound or culture. Punk is not a leather jacket, safety pins or dog chains which is sorta the ironic nature of punk is that the subculture has its own conformist nature. If Punk suggests freedom, the question would be a freedom from what?
Maybe it is a striving for a nirvana?
I find it even more impressive that Lou Reed, the Godfather of Punk (so to speak) had this occurrence as reiterated by his wife and longtime companion, Laurie Anderson:
As meditators, we had prepared for this – how to move the energy up from the belly and into the heart and out through the head. I have never seen an expression as full of wonder as Lou’s as he died. His hands were doing the water-flowing 21-form of tai chi. His eyes were wide open. I was holding in my arms the person I loved the most in the world, and talking to him as he died. His heart stopped. He wasn’t afraid. I had gotten to walk with him to the end of the world. Life – so beautiful, painful and dazzling – does not get better than that. And death? I believe that the purpose of death is the release of love.
In a general sense, I think that freedom is typically giving someone another door or option that is acceptable that bucks the trends of society. The Sex Pistols looked at the trappings of England at the time as the beginning sense for the urgency in their music. It was not just the idea of playing loud and fast but lyrics, which criticized the current political scene at the time.
One can feel the epic nature of the song on opening guitars in ‘Anarchy in the UK’, as they blast through your eardrums and you hear the dire laughter of Johnny Rotten.
This is not just another punk song about kids sniffing glue. The song is a call to action for anyone that is tired of the current socio-political environment in the UK. Safety pins were not a fashion statement but to hold clothes together. There was definitive class and social warfare occurring this time.
John Lydon’s eyes could pierce through your heart. I would imagine that anyone in the establishment seeing this guy would freak by the fact they would think that John Lydon was a madman. Maybe that was what I always focused on: his eyes. The song invokes a certain level of freedom i.e. “I am the antichrist”, in my opinion does not reflect in an anti-christian mentality but I am not going to conform and I am proud of that belief.
I am me.
• The Pixies – Ana
• The Sex Pistols – Anarchy in the UK
• Japancakes – And Begun
• Of Montreal – And I’ve Seen a Bloody Shadow