Weezer, Richard Rohr, and The Importance of Losing Yourself

In 1992, Weezer gave us a self-titled album. It was raw, and it was rough. It was only and unashamedly what it was. It did not try to be anything other than whatever it wanted to be. It can rightfully be called derivative or an attempt to cash in on the upcoming 90’s post-punk movement–above everything, it was fun.

Not much changed with the band’s subsequent releases. Weezer remained itself, but that identity was amorphous. With concept songs like “The Greatest Man That Ever Lived” flanking radio bait like “Beverly Hills” and “I Can’t Stop Partying,” Weezer is a band that lives to have a good time. If that leads to radio play, great. If it doesn’t, great. Weezer has almost no defining characteristics that it feels compelled to live up to outside of making fun music.

A band that lives in the middle space of cult iconography and A-list fame is a band that seeks to build an identity. That tepid middle ground is begging for a strong step towards one of the music world’s polarizing ends: making money, or making art. Few do both.

Weezer, like almost no band, showcases a straightforward 3rd option: make fun music.

Making fun music has brought both critical and commercial success. Critical acclaim for Weezer takes strange forms. You won’t find anyone gawking over technically gifted musicianship like you would for Foo Fighters, Sonic Youth, or Pixies. It’s hard to find acclaim for songwriting like you might for Radiohead or The Clash. You surely won’t find Weezer being touted as a pillar of “high art” like you might for Frank Ocean or Neutral Milk Hotel.

What you’ll find is endless praise for music that doesn’t take itself seriously. Weezer understands exactly what it is and what it isn’t, and ultimately doesn’t care. We’re talking about a band who has a picture of Hurley from Lost as an album cover.

We can only judge the things around us not by what they are, but by what they are trying to be. Weezer is only trying to be fun, memorable music, and they have wildly, wildly succeeded.

Weezer teaches us a valuable lesson in the spiritual value of letting go of ourselves. It is only by letting go of our constant desire to build our identity that we enter a greater, fluid relationship with the world around us.

Richard Rohr teaches this in his classic road map for life “Falling Upward.”

“In our formative years, we are so self-preoccupied that we are both overly defensive and overly offensive at the same time, with little time left for simply living, pure friendship, useless beauty, or moments of communion with nature or anything.”

Holding on to anything, good or bad, inhibits our ability to live in the moment. If our mind is constantly elsewhere, then what’s the point? How can we expect to take part in the world around us if we’re too internally occupied by our unquenchable desire to build our identity, our sense of self, and our unique “us-ness”?

“Unfortunately, most people get so preoccupied with their stable, and whether their stable is better than your stable, or whether their stable is the only ‘one, holy, catholic, and apostolic’ stable, that they never get to the birth of God and the soul. There is no indication in the text that Jesus demanded ideal stable conditions; in fact, you could say that the specific mentioning of this birth in a “manger” is making the exact opposite point.” says Rohr.

When we stop taking ourselves seriously, when we stop trying to build within ourselves the things that we plan to define ourselves with, life blooms. We learn to see what we didn’t before.

However, there is a catch: this building of our identity and internal structure is necessary. We have to do it. It is only by watching our attempt at identity building fail that we’re able to see that it was always a false finish line. More often than not, we see the temple of our identity fall because they aren’t strong enough. When our idolatrous self-temple falls, we realize we never needed it anyway.

Rohr goes on to say “Once you have your narcissistic fix, you have no real need to protect your identity, defend it, prove it, or assert it. It just is, and is more than enough. This is what we actually mean by ‘salvation’…”

After Weezer caught the attention of the music world, lead singer Rivers Cuomo retreated and poured himself into the band’s second release “Pinkerton.”

The songs are much darker, dealing with serious themes in thoughtful ways. It isn’t quite as fun as the Blue album. It is, still to this day, one of the most non-Weezer Weezer albums. Rivers Cuomo spent months and months investing in serious songwriting that would capitalize on the band’s current place in the spotlight. This was Weezer’s chance to show the world who they were. Vulnerable as ever, Pinkerton was released.

It was hated. Critics destroyed Pinkerton. Rolling Stone named it as one of the worst albums of 1996. Cuomo was crushed and went into a depression.

The temple that Weezer built to Weezer fell.

I will quote Rohr again.

“Once you have your narcissistic fix, you have no real need to protect your identity, defend it, prove it, or assert it. It just is, and is more than enough. This is what we actually mean by ‘salvation’…”

25 years later, within Weezer’s newest album “Pacific Daydream” we find the ethos of the band: “Everyone is trying to be cooler than everyone else.”

The band is what the band is. It isn’t anything more. Weezer is simply Weezer, and that is enough. You are what you are, and that’s the end of it all.

Looking within ourselves and seeing what we use around us to unnecessarily build identity is hard. We constantly tell ourselves things like “Oh, I like that,” or “I don’t like that.” We feel self-imposed pressure to be the guy or girl that does a certain thing. We have our “things.”

How often have you heard someone say “That’s my team,” or “That’s my all-time favorite…” These statements are not public praises of the subject; they are self-built mirrors to show others the temple we’ve built for ourselves. They are a disguised version of “I am someone who likes this, and that is part of who I am.” We attach ourselves to things that we think make us who we are, but are not of ourselves. We use the world around us as unneeded makeup, and there isn’t much value in that.

By pointing out what we constantly attach ourselves to, we can let it go. And when we let it go, we are free to think, feel, and act without the perpetual speed bump of our own identity. Nothing fits or doesn’t fit within our self-imposed framework. There are no square pegs forced into round holes. There aren’t even pegs or holes. There’s just us. And that’s enough.

The task of tearing down our identity structure is spiritual. The best version of ourself is not shackled by it’s own rubric for being itself. The best version of ourself is life without these chains. Searching for that life is a grand exercise in the discernment given to us as members of God’s creation.

“All we can give back and all God wants from any of us is to humbly and proudly return the product that we have been given–which is ourselves” — Richard Rohr