I have come to the conclusion that I am a rockist.

Firstly, I'm no skinny-tie-and-denim Estrus obsessive, and I always thought the garage/punk revival of whenever the hell it was (2001? 2002?) was sketchy at best, truly awful at worst. I do NOT believe that there was ever a golden age when rock musicians "got it right," and if there was I don't think it was the same era as that of the Beatles, the Stones, "Nuggets," et al.
Secondly, I am no guitar-guitar-drums snob, no backward-looking, back-to-the garage music primitivist. I absorb all kinds of music but my favorite by far is that which looks unashamedly forward: Disco Inferno, Seefeel, Kraftwerk, Sigur Ros--you get the idea.
Thirdly, as a fairly enlightened person, I can safely say I am not homophobic, racist, or sexist, three criticisms which are, apparently, frequently lobbed at rockists.

And yet: this ideal of authenticity, this expectation of artists to shy away from artifice and camp, this elevation of "high art" music like Talk Talk over "pop art" music like Kelis or M.I.A., this distrust of the mass-marketed, this high hope for rock music to change my life and be as immediate to me when I'm twenty, thirty, forty years old as it is when I hear it (which can sometimes be twenty, thirty, forty years after it was recorded)--to varying extent, I display all these characteristics and then some. I can come to no other conclusion than that I am a rockist.

The questions then, are as follows:
-Should I feel bad about this?
-If so, why can't I convince myself?

I was introduced to music through punk rock and at the heart of my love for music remains a need to be affected. I DO go on bike rides with my CD player hoping to gain some kind of revelation, or at least a peak experience (it's happened). I love pop music in its many forms, but I'm coming to realize: chiefly to the extent that it conforms to this idea, this impulse to find the music which attacks my heart and soul and brain and leaves me different from how it found me. This *is* rockism, isn't it? This *is* elitism in a way, isn't it? I much prefer M.I.A. to AC/DC, I'll grant, but I prefer Bark Psychosis to both. There are exceptions, of course--enough that the picture of me this post paints is probably very different from the genuine article. But I STILL have a mistrust of prog and MOR and pop songs whose author works for the label, and I would STILL rather hear the Minutemen than Madonna, or, to use an example I found someplace on the internet, Nirvana rather than Mariah. If this is rockism (and it must be), why does it seem so normal, even... right to me? Believe me, this post has nothing to do with ME, but this idea has suddenly acquired a tremendous (probably moreso than is warranted) importance in my mind.