Papa Roach is John Keats

Music is like poetry

— Sheila Herring, My Elementary School Music Teacher

Through the medium of Open Diary, thousands of teenagers express their deepest thoughts. Thoughts of angst, thoughts of sadness, and most often, thoughts of boredom. However, since these teenagers often can not find the words (and who ever can?) to express their great sorrow, they resort to other mediums. Oftentimes I’ll see a diary open with “I’m full of all these feelings, but these words by (whoever) just expresses it better than I ever could.” There is no shame in this. There are many occasions when the great thinkers of the world express the thoughts going through our heads far better than we ever could. That’s what makes the great thinkers so great; they express feelings in words that we mere mortals could never capture. The thing that’s bothering me is that it’s not Shakespeare or Robert Frost that I find in these diaries. No, it seems Shakespeare has been replaced with Britney Spears.

Now, I would spend the next few minutes degrading the nitwits who do this sort of thing, but, truth be told, I’d probably have been doing the same thing about 2 years ago. It just amuses me when people treat the lyrics of Smells Like Teen Spirit as if there’s some great deep meaning in them, when in fact they were just written by a good guitar player while he was high.

Still, I guess it’s natural to search for deep meaning in something, and since that’s what teens listen to, that’s what they find meaning in. And that’s ok. I like Kurt Cobain too. I’m just not going to confuse him with George Orwell anytime soon.