Throughout the first half of Music and Identity, I examined the intricacies of what we know as identity. I had thought this was a simple concept, however, I was quite wrong. From what I have learned thus far, identity is a fluid reflection of our collective, relational, individual, and material characteristics. As I continue with the second half of Music and Identity I aim to explore the end goal of identity (if there is one), and the significance of the identities we do not show to the rest of the world.

Before this class, if you had asked me what the definition of identity is, I would have easily defined what I thought identity was. I thought identity was synonymous with personality. I had thought identity was the way we displayed our likes and dislikes. Essentially, a reflection of what we are thinking on the inside. People who like a certain artist or type of music were defined as X. People who like death metal were goth. Turns out, that is not the case and they are some of the happiest people we meet. That there, proves my prior theory wrong. I also thought that identity was completely fluid. There was no predetermined path. Even though I believed that God had a predetermined path for me, I did not associate identity as a part of that path. Now, I do not think I could do so. The concept of identity has become a sort of abstract thing. Identity to me now is a concept that has been broken open and is ready to be explored.

 I learned the complexities of identity when I read Vignoles et al.’s piece “Toward an Integrated View of Identity”. Vignoles highlighted how identity can be fluid or solid. I changed my perception that identity has no end goal.1 While identity is always changing, it is much more likely that things are just falling into place to meet an end goal that is predetermined by us and the work of God (or physics). Merton goes on to explain this theory of identity better, he describes that we are on a path with God navigating our identities.2 Our identities are like playdough. They can be molded, added to, and taken away from, but in the end, it is still playdough. Some textures of playdough do not really fit with the rest of the playdough, so those pieces never really stick, or even stick out. Those pieces are our odd traits that do not seem to fit with our overall identity. 

The article about identity being a reflection according to Hood made the most sense to me. It also, however, expanded my concept of identity highlighting the nuances that go into an individual’s identity.3 There are so many things that affect identity, they change identity or fit in and expand certain aspects of your identity. I think an interesting way of showing reflection in identities is TikTok. The “for you page”, or FYP, is reflective of our likes and dislikes. The algorithm reflects what type of videos we spend more time watching, and videos we typically scroll right by. When we did the group ecologies essay, I learned how we all had TikTok as something we could all relate to during our “HPU era”. While TikTok was not the center of some of our lives, it was still impacting our lives even though they do not have the app. This app creates a collective identity that reflects a whole generation’s identity. The references people make in daily conversations trickle down to the lives of those who are not on TikTok, so they are consuming TikTok content whether they asked for it or not. I thought it was interesting how Finn brought up how her preferred style of music, which was a type of music I had never even thought about listening to, was impacting my “for you page” without me even recognizing that some of the songs I was getting on my FYP were K-Pop music. When we thought we had no overlap in our identities, we found to overlap with a sort of collective-relational identity. 

Something else I learned during this class was from Bennett I believe. He mentioned how there is a possibility that because of physics, our lives are already predetermined. Being Catholic, I never understood how people could not believe in some sort of higher power pulling the strings because some things were too perfect to be coincidences. While I still believe in God and have faith in my religion, this opened my eyes to the other side of the argument. 

During the next half of this class, I want to explore the idea of an “ultimate identity”. I want to see what the end goal is for our identities, or possibly, there is no end goal. I personally believe that there is an “ultimate identity”. Throughout our lives, we are collecting things that contribute to the end goal. Even though some things that we add to our identity do not fit, they still contribute and influence what our “ultimate identities” end up being. 

I also want to explore our internal and external identities. Internal identities theoretically are not shown to anyone, so do they matter? If no one ever sees the identity, and it is constantly internalized, then that identity does not exist to anyone but you. It is sort of like when a tree falls and no one is around to see it fall, did it really fall? The external identity is for everyone to see, so that identity counts, that is the identity that is for society. The internal identity is for you and no one else, so why should anyone besides you care what this identity is? 

Identity seems so simple, to the observer, identity is not as complex as we make it seem in this class. So who is right? Us, who are dissecting the complexities of identity, or “the others” who see identity as a simple concept. Why do we put such an emphasis on identity? Throughout this class, ironically, I have found that I have been exploring identity so much that it has lost a bit of its meaning, even though we are making identity such an emphasized concept. Like saying a word too many times makes the word lose meaning to us. 

1 Vivian Vignoles, et al. "Introduction: Toward an Integrated View of Identity," In Handbook of Identity Theory and Research, 1-27, (New York: Springer, 2011).

2 Bruce Hood, “The Looking Glass Self,” The Self Illusion: How the Brain Creates Social Identity, (Toronto: HarperCollins, 2013), 71-115. 

3 Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, (New York: New Directions, 1972).