I’ve been meaning to write this for over a month. Lots of plans, I had, for what subjects to touch on and I was going to draw a cool cartoon and everything. Instead, you’re getting this. My apologies up front.
Straightedge. Straight edge. The straight edge. Straight edgers. Whatever you call it, say it in front of the wrong person and controversy will be stewed . . . so have a bowl and a piece of bread handy.
Most recently for me it came up at work. A co-worker of mine is into hardcore and asked if I was straightedge.
Yeah. I am.
Ever since I claimed it at around 16 years old, my position on what staightedge actually is and what it entails has changed dramatically. Ask any two people in the world and they will have different answers. I used to be the kind of kid that was totally fine with all my friends drinking and doing whatnot. I was also the kind of kid that wanted to eradicate every beer company off the face of the earth while wearing my Drug Free shirt, depending on when you asked.
See, there’s a balance. If I eradicated every beer company, I’d surely be ridding a lot of unethical business practices and deceptive advertising. But I’d also be getting rid of many homebrewed (pardon the pun) businesses where people put their own work into something that people would enjoy, in the safety of their homes. And if I had no regard whatsoever for inebriation, then I may well be endangering people who got in too deep, or worse yet from personal experience, fake my acceptance to the point where it drove me to a nervous breakdown.
Not good, I tells ya.
Yeah, Karl Buechner went on Geraldo to talk on straightedge. “The discipline calls me to self-liberation.” That’s what I take to heart. I don’t declare straightedge to be a broken record and preach things, to wear clothes with x’s on them, or to sing along to cool songs. It works for me, plain and simple.
I’m sorry if my edge has gone dull and I don’t see the glamour to some one or two word term coined by a person whom, in the 1980’s, declared something as a guideline and nothing more, never intending it to be a lifelong commitment. Excuse me if I don’t see the big deal with a bunch of mediocre bands enclosing their names with two x’s, or slapping one of them right in the middle. That’s not to say that there is any inherent good or bad in the matter. For every person that thinks militance and gang membership is beneficial to bringing back the 18th amendment, there’s someone who heard of straightedge and got into it and had it get them escape from their evils. It all boils down to the person themself.
I have my conviction in my own matters, to make myself better. I have done that for myself in one way, but there’s always room for improvement. And there is no one out there that can disagree with that statement.