The stories we tell ourselves

It occurred to me the other day that I may, possibly, be just a little bit of a hipster.

I was at a party wearing a floral dress paired with scuffed black boots. But it was the words I spoke, really. That night, I said “vintage,” “the collective” and “I liked them before they were popular.” I talked about beat poetry, even though I hardly know a thing about it, and espoused the value of locally-sourced organic food even though I’d had a Double Bacon Burger for dinner. But it got worse.

“I don’t like this music,” I said. “It’s too mainstream for me.”

The fact that I’d said the word was bad enough, but that I’d emphasised it? And I had a bottle of craft beer in my hand. I really don’t know how it got there. I hate beer.

I was alarmed. I don’t want to belong to a sub-culture. I’m above being labelled. You can’t just shove me in a box because I diverge from the conventions society thrusts upon us. I don’t conform to anything or anyone. I value independent thinking, and shun the latest trends and fashions. I’m creative and progressive, unconventional, different.

Shit.

I live in Wellington. I’ve lived here for six years now, before it was cool. It’s a great city. From my new flat I can see the harbour, Somes Island in the middle, and the eastern hills behind them layered on top of each other. I keep meaning to go out to their southern-most tip, where the white Pencarrow lighthouse watches the strait between the two islands, but somehow I just keep on not doing it. I will.

The best time of year has just begun. It’s Autumn, so things are cooler at last but the sun is still warm. It’s easier to sleep. The plants are settling down from the flurry of summer, and people are relaxing. Daylight saving ends this weekend. It's been dark when I wake, but on Monday when my second alarm goes off at 7.01 I'll see the first sunlight glowing on the clouds that are almost always sitting above those hills across the harbour.

Because I like stories and thinking about myself, sometimes I try to imagine what kind of novel or sitcom or fantasty-slasher (if that’s not a real thing, then by god it’s going to be by the time I’m done) I would belong in. I try to work out the character I would play.

It’s possible – I have an Arts degree, an appreciation of the alternative, a certain smugness –  I’d be the hipster.

But I'm not all hipster, and why stop there? I’d like to be just a little bit of everything, and some days a lot of it. I could just as easily be cast as the goth, or the emo, the hippie, the yuppie, the manic pixie dream girl. I’d like to try them all. I’d like to wake up and every morning dress my life in whatever genre I choose, and be whichever of the characters is most fitting at the time.

This is a blog about tropes, and being alive.

It’s a common misconception that tropes are a sweet, sticky fruit that grew on mythological vines in ancient Mesopotamia. They are in fact themes and devices and conceptual figures of speech that we use to build stories. They’re stereotypes, and plot devices, and subjects and symbols and formulas and clichés.

Tropes are the patterns and conventions that help us understand what something is about, and help us anticipate what might happen. They help us work out what it all means.

And that’s it really, for me. I think we’re just the stories we tell ourselves about who we are.