A few months ago I wrote a post criticising people who called themselves punk without understanding what it meant. Even back then as I posted it, I found myself wondering about authenticity again. That it could mean anything that I stop listening to, change clothes, or leave a scene or subculture, then still be myself. Having done all of these things in the last year, I keep asking myself, so why did these things feel like ‘me’?

I think it comes down to adolescence. The first scene you go into feels like a ready-made self for you. It was grunge, then it was Britpop. The bands, clothes, attitude were handed to you on a platter before you had worked out what actually suited you. At that age you are trying to work out who you are, and the world is handing us versions of who we should be. Music, fashion, circles and trends are moulding us into something we think of as ‘real’ or ‘unique’ but ultimately we end up being like everyone else because most of the time, it’s just a selection from the options that already exist to all.

There’s nothing wrong with scenes or subcultures. The cold reality is that most of what I have treated as myself was made by somebody else. Detachment is not indifference. It is being able to like the record, the jacket, even the scene, without it defining you. It is where you start to notice the difference between self-discovery and breaking free of what was imposed on you. I say start, because I find myself turning even that into another badge.

It’s not only music. People become attached to being intellectual, artistic, philosophical, spiritual or politically aware. I did a lot of that to myself. Sometimes, those things get treated as enlightenment. The mechanism is the same, attachment to an identity. Including the identity of someone who has seen through identities. It never ends. I remember reading a story about a monk who said to his teacher “I’m enlightened! Now what?” His teacher said “Now detach from that.”

I used to think I was protecting myself. I was protecting an idea I had mistaken for myself. I remember how defensive I became when anyone questioned the scene I thought defined me. Then, I started to question it. What I didn’t see was that questioning could become its own scene.

Punk, mod, indie, rocker, metalhead, raver… we invent labels and defend them like religions, even though they were just categories culture handed us. Clothing works the same way. It takes time, but many people stop being themselves and start playing a role. They attach to an image and treat it as their true self. I am not outside of that. I have done it to myself with bands, with looks, and later with the idea of not needing any of them.

We worship Quadrophenia and forget its point. That it is not about becoming a carbon copy of a Mod. It is about how easily a person gets lost in their constructed self. Jimmy doesn’t fall apart because he is not Mod enough. He falls apart because the suit, the scooter and idol were the self. When Ace Face turns out to be a bellboy, there is almost nothing left underneath.

The warning isn’t just for Mods. If I replace the scooter with a practice, a teacher, or a sentence about non-attachment, I fall the same way.
If tomorrow I stop listening to certain bands, or change my clothes and hair, would I stop being myself? No. Then, why so much weight on those things? The harder question is the next one. If I stop talking about detachment, would anything be missing? If the answer is yes, I have only changed outfits.

A lot of identity is borrowed for us. Upbringing, friends, adverts, media, culture. Right from the start, we are told to pick a tribe and stick to it. This is your music. These are your clothes. These are your beliefs. This is you. What if it isn’t? What if something more ordinary is buried under years of that?

I grew tired of a lot of music for the same reason I grew tired of the scenes. Not because the records were bad. Because I had stopped hearing them and started wearing them. I began asking what a song was trying to put in me another self, another mood, another way not to sit still and whether that was enrichment or just another outfit. Music can be a tool. After the worst period of my life it was a crutch. A crutch is not a failure. I am trying not to marry the crutch to myself either. Some of it is still noise. Some of it still opens old pain. Some of it is just occupancy, something running from waking to sleep so the quieter question does not get a look in.

Every scene is a lineage of imitation dressed up as individuality. That includes the scene of people who think they have taken the costume off.

Sometimes, instead of reaching for another record, another opinion, another label, I sit in silence. Nothing answers. The urge to become someone returns almost immediately.

I am drawn to people who look less interested in performing a self. Ian Brown is one. Who keeps refusing the scripts the industry and culture hands out. I have to be careful here too. Admiring that can turn into copying a new attitude and calling it freedom. It’s not about being like him. It’s not about needing a model of who you are.

The more I look at this, the less I want to judge other people’s stories. Whether someone calls themselves punk or mod, matters a lot less to me now. I am less sure that my seeing through it matters either. We are all looking for meaning in our own way. Honesty with ourselves is more important than a better name for ourselves.

What I am practising is not having become ‘detached’. It is noticing when I reach for a name, an image, a scene, or even a spiritual position, and seeing if I can put it down. Music, fashion, circles and labels can be enjoyed. They are not who we are. Neither is the person who has worked that out.

I didn’t see this when I started. Criticising people who called themselves punk but didn’t act like it, was still me protecting a role I played. I can still feel the urge to guard my newer part, the one who writes essays about leaving it.

As some of those ideas fall away, there is more lightness. Sometimes, it doesn’t last. Sometimes, instead of looking for another song, I sit in silence. Silence doesn’t confirm a wiser self. It only asks a question that no genre, scene or label can answer, and I notice how quickly I want to answer it anyway:

Who are you when all that disappears?