The Hip made me square
To say I wrote a poem would be an overstatement. What I actually did was repurpose lyrics from The Tragically Hip into a rhyming narrative. This was all part of a sorry attempt to win backstage passes to a special New Year’s Eve concert.
I was 17 years old, and naive on two counts:
1) I was just clever enough to believe myself brilliant, but not quite wise enough to understand I wasn’t. Any writing contest I lowered myself to enter would most likely end their quest for submissions the moment mine was read; their search for a winner would most be over as soon as they received my entry. 2) I never imagined that my taste or the things with which I associated my identity would ever be embarrassing at a later date. As a milquetoast teenager with artistic leanings growing up in a small Ontario town that never seemed to feel like home, The Tragically Hip were the great equalizer. Everyone was appreciative of their music, and identifying with what they produced was a way to connect to something bigger. They were the only band you could talk about with both your English teacher and your uncle who was arrested for stealing car stereos in the ’80s.
Of course, I didn’t win the contest. Instead, I received an honourable mention and the notoriety that came from having my “poem” published on a non- Geocities website. The only remarkable things about the result was the longevity of the web page hosting my contest submission and the way in which algorithms would conspire to ensure that this was the first thing to appear in any Internet search of my name for the next decade.
Throughout university and the early stages of my career, any curious romantic partner or potential employer would be presented with a poorly arranged demi-poem inspired by a Canadian rock band as the first example of what I represented. Even as my tastes and my identity shifted into more sophisticated territory, The Tragically Hip, through no choice of my own, remained constant.
By the time the web page began dropping further down the search engine result list, I had once again grown to become less concerned with what others thought of me. I’ve also since become fond, once again, of the band that made me feel a part of something communal at an age when that seemed otherwise impossible.
As they prepare to play what could be their last concert, it seems especially important to remember where you come from, and accept that your identity is never fully defined by what you might think it is in one given moment. This is what growing up is all about: acceptance with a little bit of grace, too.