So Long. Not Goodnight.
It’s summer 2009. Taylor Swift is a country singer, the first black president sleeps peacefully in the White House, swine flu is sweeping the nation. Life is good. You and your friends slip on your checkerboard vans, tight black shirts, and studded belts and head downtown to Warped Tour because your desk-job-sellout of a father can’t tell you what to do— and certainly not how to dress—let alone a 100-degree San Antonio summer. It’s not a phase, after all. This is a lifestyle. A movement. And like any good movement of the last century, music is the driving force; the skateboard you ride on and the skinny-jean-wearing leg that powers it; the torn-open and sewn-shut heart of its people. My people. These are bands that sing about death and sex, and being misunderstood; about heartbreak and loss and sticking it to the man. Because how is one supposed to navigate the complicated emotional landscape of high school—when your girl makes eyes with another guy across the dancefloor or your dad tells you to buy pants without holes in them—without the comfort and wisdom of Fall Out Boy and Mayday Parade? We all know there’s nothing more raw, more believable, than a couple middle class suburban white boys screaming in a mic about the cultural and emotional injustices they face in this life. And when I was forced to mow my lawn with an automatic riding lawn mower at age 15, it was Cute is What We Aim For that got me through. It was Panic! at the Disco that understood my plight. But, like the actual disco of the 70’s and the hair of the 80’s, all good things must come to an end. And, like most cultural movements, a definitive end is hard to pinpoint. Some might say the end began with the dismantling of My Chemical Romance in 2013. Some will say its famous last words were the final Warped Tour of 2018. Some will say that it isn’t dead at all, just changed. Evolved. Different. And all would be right. When what’s left of your angsty teenage life becomes another monthly theme night at Barbarella’s, you know it has become a memory of a time that once was. No longer are high schools riddled with jet black, long-ish (but somehow spikey) hair that covers everything except the nose and mouth. Teenagers these days have newer unhealthy ways to deal with their negative emotions and different ways to cope other than music that screams at you: juuls, memes, sending nudes on snapchat. Maybe it’s for the better. Maybe it’s not. And maybe this culture was always destined towards a death such as this: soft and insignificant, quietly in the night. One last thing to cry over in bed while listening to a whiney-boy voice and electric guitar. But on cool, still mornings when the wind blows just right, I can almost swear I hear it. A promise and a hope. Like a whisper:
“Can you hear me? / Are you near me? / Can we pretend to leave and then / We'll meet again / When both our cars collide."
