My Best Imaginary Best Friends, Installment #2: Ryan Adams

While today's BIBF is a prolific musician, nutjob extraordinaire and generally cool bastard to boot, he is inarguably an unlikely fashion icon. To preface this BIBF installment, I think it's important to note that, while Modern Guilt is clearly a predominantly fashion-based blogging endeavour, a lot of what I find intrinsically fascinating about fashion and style is how taste and opinion in all areas of one's life shape everything about who they are. This includes what they wear, where they shop, who they befriend (or would like to in an imaginary context) and how they communicate. I suppose what I'm trying to say in not so many words is that Modern Guilt is an extension of myself through fashion, not a self because of fashion.

As such I present this Friday's unlikely, yet highly appropriate BIBF choice:

RYAN ADAMS

It could be that I really like North Carolinians (is 'Carolinian' a word?), or that he has written what I believe to be some of the most beautiful songs of the past ten years, or that he likely possesses the most extensive fitted plaid shirt collection in the world. Or it could be, and most probably is, that in my imaginary world of familial relations, he is like the cool older brother I never had in the same vein from which Neil Young is my rightful paternal figure (in this context, my uncles are the members of Crazy Horse and my cousins are from Whiskeytown and the Cardinals, in case you were wondering).

It's the fact that he doesn't give a shit whatsoever and yet cares so much that he posts embarrassing videos onto his now-defunct Tumblr account about having a broken heart and how unicorns probably don't exist. And that, at a very basic level, I relate to this kind of behaviour. I can't, however, write a magnificent song about it. This is where Ryan comes in as my BIBF. Because I would totally be like, "Ryan, do you ever think about how we're all kind of similar to androids?" and, in turn, he would totally be like "Yes, and now I'm going to go write a shockingly brilliant song about the fragility of human existence and how, within a mathematically logical world, there is so much which cannot be explained through mathematical logic." And then I would pretty much totally be like "Awesome!"

Oh yeah, and then we would trade skinny plaid cowboy shirts and drink to our hearts' content on a magnificent southern porch whilst making deliciously odd country music about Burger King and ancient Sumerians.

Here are some pictures, because it wouldn't be a proper Modern Guilt post without them...

The last of my BIBF's brief foray into the blogosphere. See, we're very much alike, no?

Self-explanatory.