Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Katlin Strzelecki


                Being art students, living in the biggest city in the Midwest, the term material rhetoric isn’t one we’d normally use but it’s one we live, breathe and absorb everyday into the fabric of our being. Coming here, I was terrified it would be like high school where I was seen as the weird girl who listened to devil worshiping music and was constantly taking photos of everything and anything. It was my greatest fear to not be accepted for the person I am here in Chicago. The concept of being understood by others is so vast that I would never expect anyone to be able to after just meeting me, but it’s when people can’t embrace the idea that different doesn’t mean defective.
                By looking at me, you can tell I have a style that differs from the norm. When I was 13, I went to my first show with some older friends. They were my best friends and they were playing one of the opening sets for the first August Burns Red CD release show at the Myspace Café in Warren, Michigan. Thinking back, I can remember how the culture that this music created for this group of people was incredible. I was sucked in immediately and although I’ve had different turns in style and taste in music, metal has always been the core of how I dress and presented myself.
                Wearing name brands or having the perfect hair has never been my main concern. To be completely honest, I’ve just always wanted to be honest with others about the person I am. As I said, it terrifies me to think that people will detest me because of a difference in appearance, tastes or interests. But that’s human nature to be afraid, yet interested in the unknown. From that first show at the Myspace Café and on, I went from wearing Hollister and Abercrombie to band shirts and bandanas. I found myself wrapped in the culture and when I was 14, I got my first facial piercing; my right nostril.
                Soon following my first nose piercing, my mom allowed me to get my septum, then my industrial. I turned 19 years old this year on May 20th and since that first piercing 5 years ago, I’ve had over 17 different parts of my body pierced and I’m nowhere near stopping.  A year ago, I got my first tattoos, one behind each ear. They’re a treble and a base clef, to represent the 11 year I spent dedicated to choral performance and voice lessons along with the 3 years I spent writing music with friends in bands of my own.
                I come off as a completely different person than a huge majority of the people I meet would ever expect. Talking to Evan after class one day, he admitted that he thought I was a lesbian at first when he met me in class. Although there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being a lesbian, I’m not one and I thought it was hilarious because he thought that purely based on seeing I had tattoos. All 8 of the art work I have so far on my body mean something very important to me. Art is what you make of it, and my tattoos are part of what makes me who I am. Someday I will be just as old and wrinkly as everyone else, but I will have the most interesting way of explaining my life and the story it’s told by the tattoos that will cover me.
                In the lecture from Brendan Riley yesterday about zombies, he ended the presentation with a few closing points, one of which being “be thought about the things you love”. That was one of the most captivating things I’ve heard in my life because it’s how I truly try to live my life but I’d never thought of it that way. The way I stay thoughtful about the things I love is through my tattoos, my photos and my tastes. Everyone is different, even if you’re identical down to your DNA, our minds are the most potent weapons we will ever have. We love the things we do without any rhyme or reason, it’s just purely because we are who we are and no one should ever force us to change that.

No comments:

Post a Comment