Be It Music Or Writing, Vulnerability Is What Connects Us

(This article first appeared in The Riff Magazine on Medium https://medium.com/@robjanicke)

Photo by Sinitta Leunen on Unsplash

Art is subjective. Or as the Beastie Boys once said, “Cause one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor” on “What Comes Around” off 1989’s Paul’s Boutique. The point is, if you’re creating something, it’s hard to tell if your artistic expression will resonate with people because everyone is different.

Unless…

You allow yourself to give zero f&cks and be as open, naked, and vulnerable as possible. That’s why art, be it music, writing, painting, acting, etc. touches people as deeply as it does.

I wrote my first piece, "I Turned 44, Quit My Job, Started aRecord Label, and Went to Therapy...You Should Too" on this platform over four years ago, in early 2020. I’ve been writing since the 1980s (poetry, song lyrics) and started writing about music as a freelancer in 2004 or so. Music has always been a part of who and what I am.

Medium was relatively new to me, and if I was going to enjoy writing here, I knew it had to be genuine. I had to be authentic. I can fake many things and even get away with some of them, but if I’m not truthful and raw in my writing, I cannot stand myself and will never continue.

As you can probably guess from the title, my first article contained a dark theme surrounded by enough lightheartedness to make it relatable to most people who get lost along the way. After this piece, I became even more open and vulnerable, taking on many difficult topics and even publishing dozens of poems that certainly weren’t easy to share.

Authenticity though…it’s a must.

As I began sharing this article on social media, I started getting messages from people I knew and many I didn’t, thanking me for being brave enough to discuss such a personal part of my life. What they saw as bravery, I saw as necessary. I wasn’t being brave at all, just honest. Either way, most notes also noted that after reading my brief story, they were inspired to start telling their stories. Some wrote pages worth of information to me right then and there.

I was humbled beyond words.

In the Spring of 2020, I had an idea for a book about the music and culture of the late 80s/early 90s grunge and alternative movement that would shockingly take over the world for almost a decade and become one of the most important genres and eras in the history of music. It’s not just about the music and culture (although it spans 1984–1999, so there’s a ton of it there). It also discusses the heavy emotions that Gen X kids, the artists included, were feeling and relating to at the time.

Throughout the book, I told many personal stories about how certain bands and cultural and societal norms back then affected me. It gets a bit deep. I interviewed musicians who sold millions of records in the 90s, writers, sociologists, and professors who study art and culture, and scientists who used some of that music as therapy and potential cures for Dementia and Alzheimer’s, along with many others who did amazing things with their lives all based on the inspiration they felt because of the music and culture of the 1990s.

After four long years of blood, sweat, tears, fears, laughs, fun, insecurities, confusion, doubt, and ultimately excitement, SLACKER — 1991, Teen Spirit Angst, and the Generation It Created (Inspired By You Books, Fall 2024) is available for pre-sale.

Therapy was tough enough to write about in the article I mentioned earlier, but that became easy throughout the book-writing process. I was so inspired by the people who told me that my article helped them and, in some cases, gave them the courage and push they needed to change their lives that I knew I had to share even more in the book.

If Alice In Chains and Soundgarden could openly write and sing about suicide and addiction, and Pearl Jam and Nirvana felt confident enough to share stories of broken homes, depression, and rage, I could do the same. Music and vulnerability go hand in hand.

For the first time in my life, SLACKER allowed me the platform to discuss the two times in my life when I had suicidal thoughts and sought help because I didn’t think I was capable of fixing myself.

Spoiler alert…I made it!

I didn’t do the things I wrote down in a letter I sent to my parents asserting I’d do. Other people just like me weren’t as lucky. I felt a responsibility to tell the story to others who love and still live with grunge and alternative music every day, three-plus decades later, that there is a way out. Just because some of the music discusses the darkest depths of the human soul, it doesn’t mean the listener has to stay there. The music can be enjoyed without the emulation.

I can sum it up with a passage from the book…a declaration really:

"Hi, my name is Rob and I’m a SLACKER. A card-carrying member of Generation X with the musical DNA to prove it. I’m a product of divorce, single-parent upbringing, therapy, and MTV.

I’m a latchkey kid who was left alone to figure it all out by myself, but never quite did. I’m still full of questions and teen spirit angst with more targets for my slings and arrows now, but the problem is, no one bleeds from the puncture wounds anymore. 

I’m a remnant of the forgotten generation as the spoiled meat between the doughy sides of baby boomer and millennial bread. I rot in the middle as they argue over who has the bigger slice .I’ve been looking California and feeling Minnesota for over three decades now (if you know, you know), but I’m still alive…we’re all still alive, and I’d have it no other way.

A reluctant icon once sang, “Teenage angst has paid off well, now I’m bored and old”, almost prophesying how this unlikely magic carpet ride would end. I’ve referenced it before, but that is the first line, from the first song off In Utero by Nirvana, the follow-up to the biggest album of the era, Nevermind.

Kurt wasn’t shy about his feelings regarding his newly anointed sainthood but we didn’t care, we only wanted more.

Kurt never did grow old though, he left that to the rest of us.

Now that we’re more than 30 years on from the start of the improbable success story that was the early 90s grunge and alternative movement, we should relish in the fact that we were there for it all, and still have the music to wash over us, get to introduce it to our children, and somehow morph into the best version of a slacker that anyone could’ve ever imagined."

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Pre-order SLACKER — 1991, Teen Spirit Angst, and the Generation It Created (Inspired By You Books, Fall 2024) here and receive a signed First Edition Copy.

Check out my website for all of my social media pages and dates of appearances where I read excerpts from the book, tell stories about some of the interviews, discuss the book writing process, and more.