Winnipeg Boys and Bandage Coloured Skin

I always thought I would grow up and stop listning to angsty music about how the system left me out.  I mean, I am the system now, working for the government, with a Masters Degree in Economics (can you get more system?) with a good income, a house, a husband and kids, worrying about filling out school forms and finding matching socks so my kids can performatively looked cared for.  But In the past few years I find the 20 year old chav boyz talk to me.

I will admit a sort of shame that so many of these are white guys.  Why so few women?  I am trying to streach out but keep coming back to the men.

Lately I am listning to the Winnipeg Boys as I write at work.  I am feeling their lyrics and the loss of place.  I feel the struggle to find and perserve a healthy identity and community.  I feel the struggle.  My first tattoo, and the fall element in my medicine wheel is the word "struggle".  It was originally from the Colson Whitehead's novel "Apex Hides the Hurt" an awesome "post multiculturalism/racial" novel.

Partly, being a person with "bandage" coloured skin always sort of horrified me.  What an ugly commercial colour.  But I also had to wonder if the fact that it hit my hurts so well make up for that?  I could hide things.  This novel really spoke to me as it about a person who need to name the first multicultural bandages - ones that match every skin tone.  I was also working on anti-racism policy at the time and so caught in thoughts about "race" and how the government defined race and the implications for policy and international conversations.  This book seemed like a ray of hope from the future.

I think about these things while I write.  I listen to my chav boys.  How do I tell my children to be who they really are when I know that is often penalized?  How do i stay true to myself?  I am really good at my job, but are there other place I would add more to the community?  As the Winnipeg Boys say "On a one lane road.  Two lane life."