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Hi there, I'm new.

I'm also at home sick, so I was thinking about tribes - my own, other peoples. I mean, where I grew up, what worldview I have, who shares it. I also have a raging fever, so sorry if I'm barely coherent.

The thing is, I growing up I didn't really have a tribe - we moved around a lot, broken home, boring same-old-story. I started out in Mississippi in the US and I've ended up in inner-western Sydney, Australia where I think I finally have a tribe of my own. As a kid, I chose my own tribe (metal, then punk, then God, then very vocal atheism).

I now find myself attracted to music with a strong sense of place - Frank in South London and Anglicana in general, the Dropkick Murphys (Boston), Springsteen (New Jersey) and so forth. I'm sort of fascinated with what it would be like to have lived that life, in those places that their music takes me.

So what's your tribe? Where are you from? Where do you identify with? What do you love about it? What is it that makes you go, yes, I'm one of 'them'?

Me, these days I'm an inner-western Sydney girl. I hang out in cafes and listen to eclectic music. I went back to law school at 40, which makes me sufficiently quirky for my neighborhood, I think. We're a gay-friendly place, we have lots of live music and restaurants. We have hipsters, but we have punks, too. The anarchist bookstore is round the corner, next to the Turkish place one one side and the Buddhist monastery on the other. In the summer we have wine at the pub, sitting outside to people watch and talk about deep things and listen to music. I wear Docs and jeans. My hair is purple. I seldom worry that I'm too old to be part of it, which I would if I lived in a more uptight place. I love it here and I've found my tribe, I'm never leaving.

You?

I think I probably pride myself most in having very little feeling of belonging to a 'tribe' in the context used here. I have friends from work, home, university and various social meanderings, but whilst I share plenty in common with each I make no effort, conscious or not, to be like them or 'fit in', and I don't think they do with me. Some of them are millionaire suits who don't own a pair of jeans or a single CD and pass their time sailing in their deck shoes and chinos, others are die-hard lunatics covered head to toe in tattoos and piercings who spend their time listening to music even I would consider inaccessible whilst throwing themselves into things that they should know better than to do at their age. There's also plenty in between. If I have a 'tribe' I guess it's my missus and my two cats, all of whom require no physical or personal traits other than loving them (and feeding them..) to be part of it. In fact it's the getting away from bullshit tags and labels and hunkering down with them when I'm at my most content as then I don't even have to have a passing worry of conforming with an ideal that others prescribe or assume of me.

Welcome by the way

Thanks for the welcome, Pete.

My immediate tribe is 4 cats, 2 dogs, a surly 17 year old boy and my husband. I relate!

I guess what I meant to convey is a notion of being where you belong, and not trying to fit in. I did spend a lot of time consciously not being like everyone else - I think more like aggressively being myself, but I think I've found a place where everyone else is like me. It's more of a feeling, I guess. I'd have purple hair and wear Docs and jeans wherever I lived, but here I don't stand out.

I think what attracts me to a sense of place is wondering what it would be like to live that life, without having to actually give up anything I had now. Place is more than just a location, but a feeling, people, etc. I can't express myself.

Bill Bryson wrote about Australia that if he could have exactly the same life he had now, but also be able to live here, too, he would. That's sort of what I mean.

Now I will go and drink cough syrup until the cough goes away, or until I can covey what I'm trying to say better. Or I pass out. Each is a likely outcome here, so wish me luck.

I enjoyed reading your post, welcome.

I can only relate to an extent. I feel at home on trains or towns I used to live in. But after about a week they don't feel like home any more. My tribe is a bunch of books written by dead people and various friends scattered around the country.

Tribeless here. I felt like I "fit in" for about a year in college before being entombed in an abusive relationship. I was a poet in high school but lost my muse far too young, but still have a great passion for words, which is probably why I am drawn to Frank's music. I'm no longer in that awful marriage but rather in a very happy one, but it feels like we're on an island sometimes. I am passionate about mothering my child, but I have no real village to help raise her. I have a good friend in town and another by wire, and that is enough usually, but doesn't really feel like a society. I am shy and insecure so it's hard for me to reach out to make friends. I live in books and music a lot. I go in cycles politically between being very passionate and hopeful for change and desperately convinced it will never happen. I listened to "Love, Ire and Somg" twelve times on repeat one night because I find it purely perfect.

No tribe for me! I grew up in lower-middle class Connecticut (the US state, basically between NYC and Boston), was kicked out by my super-religious-conservative parents when I was 16 for generally being rebellious (nothing major... just being agnostic and academically inclined, and having a British boyfriend they couldn't stand). I moved in with my grandparents outside Orlando, FL, graduated high school with honors, worked my way through university, and just made my way to the West Coast. I still have the same best friend from my hometown in CT, and we were always majorly into music growing up and it was the biggest influence on me and my development. Other than that and pretty much always having a steady romantic partner, I've been a bit of a lone wolf all along. I'm still only 22, so maybe that will change!