Who Are You?

I've been invited to a posh black tie thing through work and I was mulling it over this morning on my way to work and decided that black tie offended my punk sensibilities. And then I thought, hang on, my "punk sensibilities"?

You see, I can't help but associate black tie with the worst of the '80s excesses, with braying hooray Henries and too much champagne and cocaine and that's not the world I move in. And have never wanted to move in.

And that started me wondering whether that's who I think I am, the ultimate me, a punk? Punk was a long time ago but it's also now. Punk was never about wearing the uniform and having the hair, it was about being yourself, actively being yourself. But we all turn 'being yourself' into being one of the herd. Even the most individualist of us is part of a herd, a herd of individualists who gather together to poke fun at other herds. I'm no longer 17 (thankfully), don't have the hair to spike up and never saw the point in bondage trousers so why did my subconscious throw up 'punk'?

I started listening to The Ramones on the way home this evening. New York punk is sufficiently distant from my roots to allow some thinking space and that started me thinking of when I saw Buffy Sainte-Marie in New York with Tommy Ramone's new bluegrass project as the support act (Uncle Monk). I shook Tommy's hand and said I enjoyed his set - I shook the hand of a Ramone. But, if you look on Buffy's MySpace even she is part of a herd in terms of the bit of blurb beside her name - 'after the beatniks and before the hippies'. Replace 'Sheena' with 'Buffy' and you have 'Buffy Is A Punk Rocker'.

It's strange really. To look at me you'd think I was a mild mannered middle aged gentleman but, obviously, deep inside (very deep) I'm a mass of raging hormones, rebellion and rather odd principles.

Who are you? Yes, you over there. Who are you really, deep down? Do you even know?