What the indie ???

The word “indie” seems common and popular today . It’s used in contexts such as, Sufjan Stevens and his drooling indie kid fans, or Zooey Deschanel the indie poster-girl.

But what does “indie” really mean?

The word seems to have strayed from its original meaning and context, having drifted closer to the wrecking machine of mass cool-culture. Which, ironically, it was originally a defense against. This is unfortunate. It’s a word with such lovely connotations. I’m afraid it may soon be lost forever. Pity, I hate to see this happen.

The root word is “independent.”

I think the first time I heard it was sometime in the 90's in reference to the music of Ani DiFranco.

With her, it’s appropriate and understandable. She’s independent. For a number of reasons, she is a marginal figure – knowingly and intentionally. She’s been an outspoken critic of slick and soul-less corporate American culture, including the music industry. She has been a trailblazer of what might be called punk humanism. She has a unique style which she has always remained faithful to. She has been true to herself even amid criticism and at considerable personal expense (“The Million You Never Made” is an anthem for this theme).

After years of selling homemade records out of her car after two-bit shows, she gained a large enough following to start her own label. She wants to help other songwriters do as she has done. She wants good artists to find their audience and connect with them, while still owning the rights to their own music, hence remaining “independent.” She doesn’t want them to become corporate-owned products, she wants them to remain artists.

From this Ani DiFranco perspective, “indie” makes sense. If this type of “indie” manages to be “cool,” it’s incidental and unintentional. It’s “cool” because it’s a fresh voice coming from some free place which is appealing and rare. People lack that, they gravitate to that, they are attracted to it, they want to be part of it too. That’s why they see it as “cool.”

“Indie,” then, has a reference to writing, art, or creativity, especially those with something to say and an original and compelling way of saying it. By the way, this is not meant to be elitist. The elitist cult of the “artist” is itself a symptom of the problem that true “indie” resists. It’s just that some people are gifted to speak in a way that moves others, and they become good and helpful reference points for others.

“Indie” includes elements of being poor, creative, faithful to one’s heart and vision, critical of common-herd group-think, unsatisfied with culturally-imposed superficial status-quo categories of existence. It includes wanting more, being unsatisfied, seeing what the culture has to offer and finding it wanting. It includes wanting to represent a voice which has gone unheard; speaking for people and things which are forgotten or neglected, to everyone’s impoverishment.

This requires a special type of person, one who is deep and self-aware enough to know and articulate their own heart beyond the imposed feelings/thoughts/tastes/categories of the heavy-handed common mentality.

Did I mention “poor?”

The “indie” will always be poor... existentially, if not always monetarily. The “indie” will always be a marginal figure who stands willingly contrary to the common mentality, to a large degree left out of its ill-gotten riches. The indie will rarely, and only accidentally, be popularly fashionable, because today, let’s face it, the Man manipulates cool like he manipulates people. He controls the popular imagination and its opinions and categories, and the indie wants no part of them. The indie sees and is moved and lives for a world that the Man and his minions do not see. The indie serves a different master altogether, and has an agenda that’s like a parallel universe.

The indie sticks it to the Man, but not by direct attack. The Man does not merit that much attention. No, the indie sticks it to the Man by becoming absorbed in projects of beauty and wonder, which the Man is blind to and uninterested in, and is more than a little threatened by, since they may thwart his control over minds and hearts (and wallets). And in this way, the indie wins hearts and so, is the ultimate subversive. Love and beauty and truth always effect more powerful and lasting change than violence and coercion, something the Man may reluctantly note (in his more lucid moments) but will never understand.

The rebellion of the indie is ultimately not so much an opting out as an opting in. The indie opts for a world of different interests and engagements – ones of freedom and beauty. Sticking it to the Man is not, at heart, some stupid adolescent excuse for acting like an irresponsible jerk. That’s poser, not indie. “The Man” can be a scapegoat excuse for mindless rebellion. But for the indie, “The Man” represents the impersonal forces which enslave, hinder, thwart, or otherwise abuse the human soul. Despotic authority, not the authentic authority of truth, beauty, goodness, love. The true “indie” serves these humbly and obediently. Rather, the authority of the Man is the impersonal social and cultural forces which serves their own interests, not those of others.

So what does any of this have to do with the increasingly stereotypical – and increasingly risible – cool/ironic hipster schtick? The word “indie” is now more and more used in these contexts. It will soon be one more sad irony of postmodern culture when “indie” is associated primarily with the popular fashion styles of bored, mostly white, often moneyed, and increasingly mainstream twenty- and thirty-somethings. And then, is killed and renounced, only to pass into the ever-growing vocabularistic warehouse of irony.

The spirit of “indie” will endure. It has been the creative impulse behind the great heralds of benevolent newness. It has helped make a voice for many of the voiceless, and will continue to do so. It’s just that soon, we may need a new word to describe it.