1.9K views Dec 2009
A satirical song follows a young hipster from teenage skateboarding and indie music through art school, veganism, existential angst, and a return home.
0:02 You're cool. When you were 14, you hate your dad. When you were 15, you took a lot of photographs. 0:08 They were Polaroids, and your parents were so annoyed and just wished inside their heart that you would go and get employed. 0:12 When you were 16, you thought you liked to skateboard. When you were 17, you thought that you should skate more. 0:17 When you were 18, you knew you'd never skate again, and it was high time you found a hobby you felt safer in. 0:22 It wasn't pain, of course, but just that you were over it. High school was cool and all, but it's done. 0:26 Get over it. You scoffed at all your friends who went to get real jobs, contemplating how to get your dumb friends to peel off. 0:32 After thinking hard, it all became apparent that being cool would come by hunting out the esoteric. 0:36 You were itching for stuffy, pedantic arguments and thought about trading in your hoodie for a cardigan, and so you did. 0:42 Off to college for an arts degree, you thought CJSR was chic and volunteered heartily, and it was like eureka when you'd finally seen the multitude of cool people saying music is a part of me. 0:51 Every day you went to MegaTunes and Blackbird till you heard the library was free of use and faster. 0:55 You liked lo-fi and Icelandic shoegaze. You finally got your very own night show on Tuesdays. 1:00 You went to lots of shows, and you were sort of well known, putting every local celebrity in your cell phone. 1:05 You started working at American Apparel, giving condescending looks to every single kid who dared go. 1:10 I mean, we all know you need to dress decently unless you're a big deal inside the local theater scene. 1:15 That was around when you found out about the Metro, and seeing real cinema was too cool to let go. 1:19 Monday nights you went to Princess or Garneau, unless you caught wind of some loft party or art show. 1:24 The French films became your absolute favorite, and someone told you that they're similar to novels. 1:28 Whoa! That was your big awakening to literature, and you felt as if your whole life before was immature. 1:34 Books, books, books, it's all you really cared for. That was when you started always thinking of the airport. 1:38 You started saying all we had was Leonard Cohen, besides some Margaret Atwood poems, Canada's a no one. 1:43 You like the Frenchies, and of course, the expatriates, and similar to Sartre, you were an existential atheist. 1:48 You called God the G word, but you liked holy water, but as for any piety, you said, why bother? 1:53 You were more for the reckless life of dead authors. All this, plus your sociology minor, made you postmodern. 1:58 The funny part was that you didn't know what happened, but all of a sudden you wanted to leave in a Kerouac fashion. 2:02 You lust for that sentimental irresponsibility, thinking any sort of staying still is a futility. 2:07 Ironically, you were all for Marx and Engels, admitting cynically that you would probably vote for Hillary. 2:12 But you're Canadian, even though you hate it here, so you voted green, hugged a tree, and kept on changing your degree. 2:17 It occurred to you that thin people looked depraved and interesting, and because of that they were treated different. 2:22 You also noticed most of the fatty foods you craved were made of meat and dairy, so you were all in for veganism. 2:26 You didn't say it was that you could look deathly ill, but because animals are people too, and why should they be treated different? 2:31 That's the only self-denial university instilled, because in a postmodern way, you've given yourself over to hedonism. 2:37 Huh. 2:40 So who can define what love is anyway? That two people forever thing it up and died with Hemingway. 2:45 It's so idealistic, it's so Jane Austen. It's too difficult to find and too easy to get lost in. 2:50 You found a mirror to love inside of every set of eyes and the sadder ones that always had you hypnotized. 2:55 You took them to your dorm till it became the norm, but soon every morn felt bitterly forlorn. 3:00 Your lovers left, and you weren't even sore at them because sex had grown boring, and you rarely even orgasmed. 3:05 You just wanted to touch base with yourself. You felt you built this house without a door to get back out. 3:12 All despondent with a bottle air and weenie, sardonic and lethargic and almost suicidal. 3:17 You'd fall asleep with cigarettes on the sheet, nearly dying every night as if it were some recital, because it's always been cool to have everyone calling you, concerned you're going to kill yourself if they aren't calling you. 3:26 The only thing holding you back from killing yourself was years of Sunday school and the childish fear of hell. 3:31 You missed your childhood when you known who you were, when life wasn't a contest to which you had adjourned. 3:35 You bused home for Christmas with your ghost beside you, and your parents and your siblings barely recognized you. 3:41 You saw your mother's eyes, and your spirit stirred. You saw you weren't free, as you had believed. 3:46 All along, hell was where you were, not somewhere that you were going to be. 
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