Caring is Creepy — The Shins

#365Songs: July 29th

My Mom grew up in a broken home, a rare scenario back in the ’50s and ’60s. Her own mother lived large, always out, a drinker and smoker, a woman who as I now process from a distance was anything but traditional. Her father was one of 12 or 13 children, a first generation Irish American, more conservative with a bent towards religion. Her brother, my Uncle, met and married a Roman Catholic and rotated his life around the Church — in all its complexities and contradictions. Perhaps that’s why my Mom was so traditional, so enamored with that layer of family values she heard in bubblegum pop and prude early sitcoms. To create a bubble around her home was to ensure nobody could ever leave it.

That strategy worked for everyone but me.

For those who understand the reference, she raised my sister and I in the mold of Beaver Cleaver’s family — a reference I know because that’s the sort of “pop culture” I was fed in the ’80s. The Cosby’s were a Thursday night staple in the ’80s, but given the color of their skin she was more prone to reference the Keaton Family from Family Ties.

I bring this up because today I’m thinking about the word “weird,” as it’s circulating across the political landscape at the moment. Historically, “weird” was a word most often used by proper folks like my Mom when referencing anyone different — another word she used to describe non-Whites and anyone she suspected as being gay. “Well, he’s different,” or eccentric, “Mike, are you sure you want to spend time with her? Her family is… weird.”

These are words owned by traditionalists, conservatives, a reminder that to be anything but a conformist is to fall outside the realms of civilized lifestyles. If she’d been honest with herself, or met me as anyone other than her own son, I’m certain she would’ve used a word like “weird” or “different” to define me.

I think I’ll go home and mull this over
Before I cram it down my throat
At long last it’s crashed, its colossal mass
Has broken up into bits in my moat

The Democrats, for the first time since the 2008 Obama campaign — and perhaps not even then, to this extent — have unified and rallied together. We’re suddenly playing a new tone, matching aggression with aggression. As wise parents have said for generations, the only way to rattle a bully is to bully the bully right back. The repetition of the word “weird” to describe J.D. Vance’s purported couch fucking or dolphin porn fetish, or the way Trump schlumps across the stage to awkwardly kiss the flag, and it’s gone viral from there. Pulling one straight from the GOP playback, and thus far it’s proven to be incredibly effective. It’s rattling Trump and his cult mob to the core because they know exactly what we mean by “weird,” and, for now at least, the only reaction they can muster is anger. Like the bully covering his face after taking unexpected punches, whining in a higher pitch than he’d like, screeching for us to stop, it’s not fair.

Lift the mattress off the floor
Walk the cramps off
Go meander in the cold
Hail to your dark skin
Hiding the fact you’re dead again
Underneath the power lines seeking shade
Far above our heads are the icy heights
That contain all reason

All of this is a bittersweet, however, as it won’t ultimately change anything. This is not, after all, a crowd that changes, evolves, or learns from its behaviors. It won’t change the definition of weird, won’t alter their conformist ways, won’t lead to them suddenly accepting the concept of weirdness as a compliment.

And to be clear, they’re not “weird” in the sense that we’re weird. Or queer. Or unique. They’re just assholes caught in rare moments of being human.

And that gets me to music. Finally,

My 13-year-old kid is on a movie streak, devouring all the coming-of-age films made over the past 20 years: The Way Way Back, The Edge of Seventeen, Adventureland, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and Booksmart. He also watched Garden State, and made the astute observation that my experience going home is akin to Zach Braff’s. I relate to that character on countless levels — the numbness after a mother’s death, the out of placeness with family, the claustrophobia of knowing that everyone sees our differences, our weirdness.

In an interview shortly after the film was released, AV Club asked The Shins’ James Mercer about Caring Is Creepy, a standout song off of Garden State’s soundtrack. He said, “When I came up with that idea for the title, I was talking about how in my circle of friends — this was my circle of friends, especially in Albuquerque — you drink and you hang out and you talk and you make jokes and you do all that stuff, but as soon as you start talking about anything real, something that actually moves you or anything like that, it’s just fucking awkward. You know, there’s a lot of ways to kill a party — talking about politics and that shit — but I’m talking about anything that’s heartfelt. That used to grump me out.”

That awkwardness is filtered through all my encounters back “home,” with family and old friends. I’m from there, but not “of there.” I am, and always have been, what my Mom would’ve referred to as “different,” “weird.” Though I own my individuality, my non-conformist ways, my progressive “wokeness,” it never feels all that great in the moment to be the outlier. Perhaps the only thing worse than not being seen at all is to be seen wrong, to be misunderstood, to be at the center of the wrong sort of attention. Garden State nails that feeling several times throughout the film, at home, at parties, on the streets. It’s not until he meets a girl weirder than him, and reconnects with a friend who acknowledges and reveals his own weirdness, that he feels a sense of peace.

It’s a luscious mix of words and tricks
That let us bet when we know we should fold
On rocks I dreamt of where we’d stepped
And the whole mess of roads we’re now on

Hold your glass up, hold it in
Never betray the way you’ve always known it is
One day I’ll be wondering how
I got so old just wondering how
I never got cold wearing nothing in the snow

To bring this back full circle, I don’t feel bad for these fragile Republican cult members who suddenly find themselves on the wrong end of their own insult. But I do recognize in this moment all of us who have felt that way our whole lives, who stand stranded in places perpetually misunderstood, misseen, always wandering off in search of a safer space.

I’m also reminded that no matter where we go, back home or to a place we’ve never been, there are always other weirdos waiting to be found. When I step off that plane next week in Cleveland, I’ll be looking for you, whoever you are. I’ll recognize you immediately as the sort of person my Mom would’ve called “different.” “Weird.” You’ve alway been and always will be my people.

This is way beyond my remote concern
Of being condescending

All these squawking birds won’t quit
Building nothing, laying bricks

~

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