At this point, it comes off as artifice, nearly 47 years since punk rock legends The Sex Pistols lit up Parliament and Buckingham Palace with a balls-out declaration of no future for no dogsbody with their then-alarming dictum, “Anarchy in the U.K.”
I can remember seeing the old anarchy symbol above all over the streets, spray-painted on bridge underpasses or scrawled on the book covers of the punkers I went to school with. I even wore a scratchy iron anarchy symbol of my own when us metalheads merged our subculture with the punk cotillion back in the late 1980s. It was called crossover back then, and the anarchy symbol, more than a macabre skull, was a unifying symbol.
Maybe we were artifice ourselves, maybe we were believing in something far over our young, dumb heads. True anarchy is a state of mind, yes, but put into action, the ramifications are the undoing of society itself. At age 52, rebellion and anarchy comes off to me more like couture instead of counterculture. A bunch of bollocks.
Taking a pit stop and lifting my kilt at a local Celtic Festival my fiancée, TJ, was selling her books at to a large degree of success, I felt obligated to snap this picture in the stall as much as shake my head at it. These days, unlike Johnny Rotten, I know what I want and I know how to get it. The long road to getting what I want has been the road lesser traveled, and filled with anarchy of a proverbial, not a literal sense.
Today’s youth have their own problems and their own frustrations their seniors can never get on their level with. Generations pass and generations find bigger conveniences, elevating the angst of those who came before them. Yet getting pissed and destroying as junior insurrectionists or even old, crusty dogs, is just, well, a wankfest.
–Photo by Ray Van Horn, Jr.
Roads Lesser Traveled 
We’re all pretty vacant when you get down to it.
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Yeah, I sometimes think about the 80s and wondering why the subcultural realm hated Reagan so much and it was all artifice since America thrived under his leadership. Not a perfect prez, but a damned good one. I think of the UK hardcore bands like The Exploited, Discharge, GBH, Subhumans, etc. constantly going after Margaret Thatcher and Parliament. The Exploited pulling no punches in their litany of hatred, often with a “c” word. When you’re young and looking for an identity and sense of the world, that shit resonates somehow. Very shallow. I watch my own son do the same thing in his world and making fun of our things and experiences of which he has no clue about but THINKS he does. Adolescence is wonderful and joyous, but it’s also the most alarmingly clueless period of life.
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I can still relate to their disgust of Reagan (without going into the politics of the matter), as a recipient of the more detrimental policies he was responsible for helping enact. I didn’t like him before I got wrapped up in the subculture of the time, and continued to dislike him as I became more self-aware. That said, compared to some of the antics of the current policymakers, I’d take him over what we have currently.
My daughter has some of the same issues as your son. I keep trying to tell her that, as fashionable as it is currently to be offended by everything, she needs to take the chip off her shoulder and actually *listen* to the people who outrage her (which is everyone, honestly).
She can’t imagine a world in which her generation is not the most downtrodden and disadvantaged of any generation that ever existed in modern times, which makes me laugh and laugh and laugh. “Well, at least you don’t have to worry about conscription,” I tell her. “There’s that.”
She doesn’t have a response to that one.
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Where’s the kilt picture, Ray?
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LOL, alright, stand by. I got a handful of people asking me for this.
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