Rihn 1

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Communitas, 30 June 2015

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In the late 1970s, punk rock broke onto the music scene with its aesthetic

of tattered DIY fashion and equally tattered DIY power chords. One of those

intensely creative yet short-lived bands was X-Ray Spex, fronted by the

Scotch/Irish-Somali singer Poly Styrene, whose vocals danced from melodic to

shrill. They released only one album, Germfree Adolescents, in 1978. In the

chorus to the track Identity, Styrene challenges the idea of an identity crisis:

“Identity is the crisis, can't you see.” The song muses on self/representation,

asking the listener if they see themselves in the mirror, on the tv, in magazines,

but takes a darker turn when the mirror is smashed and its pieces are used to

“slash your wrists.” Identity is not merely a faithful performance or representation

of one's self, but something relational, something that takes on a life of its own, a

crisis which takes a life. For X-Ray Spex, identity is –

Imma let you finish, but –

Fast forward a couple short years. Despite its crises, punk lived on,

changing, evolving. The Misfits, launched a blend of horror movie imagery with

punk rock sound. Singer Glenn Danzig's voice wavered from ghostly to an

impersonation of Elvis Presley. On the track Hybrid Moments, he warns the

listener “Your face is momentary.” One's face is central to one's identity; it is

always there, presenting itself. Yet can it also be momentary, ephemeral? Can, as

the track's title suggests, a moment be hybrid? Within the singular, can there be

Rihn 2

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Communitas, 30 June 2015

also simultaneity? Our faces are less monumental, perhaps, than they are

momentary – hybrid, changing, decaying even. Identifying marks are not static,

they are accumulated over time; they can be bought and sold. Our faces can be –

Imma let you finish, but –

Kanye West appeared to come out of nowhere, unexpectedly next to

Taylor Swift on the stage of the MTV Video Awards. It happened in a moment. It

happened in a crisis. It was an interruption, a disruption, an eruption: a reminder

of black excellence and white mediocrity. A corruption of white supremacy. From

the Latin rumpere: to break or burst –

Imma let you finish, but –

Marlon Brando refused to accept the Academy Award for his work in The

Godfather, sending instead Native American actress Sacheen Littlefeather. That

was a moment. It burst: the protest of racist portrayals in Hollywood movies

broke onto the Academy's stage. Her face was not his face, yet suddenly his

space became her space. Suddenly the moment –

Imma let you finish, but –

Muntadhar al-Zaidi threw his shoes at George W. Bush. Jennicet Gutiérrez

interrupted Barack Obama about trans rights. And Bree Newsome climbed a

flagpole to pull down a Confederate flag.

Imma let you finish, but –

Identity is breaking, identity is bursting. It is the crisis of unfinished

business in a world in which we want everything to be finishable. It is momentary

in a world in which we want everything to be everlasting. Identity is an

interruption from which we cannot return.

Imma let you finish, but –

Rihn 3

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Communitas, 30 June 2015

Essay presented to Communitas, 30 June 2015

https://www.facebook.com/COMMUNITASFJM