On one hand:
I understand the conception of self and identity that exists independent of all other factors. The "I" that is different from everything else that is not "I". It's just me. And the border of me ends where my cells end.

I understand it because that's the world in which I was conditioned. But it isn't what I intuit now after so many years of development. My conception of self and identity is not just this thing, this composite of cells, forming organs, forming being. I think, therefore I am crap.

I've grown to think of self as a process, metabolizing and breathing, as being an inextricable function of time moving forward. I am not separate from the air I breathe. I can't separate my being from the time I move in, in which my lungs breathe in and out.

How far I extend this is arbitrary. It can encompass just the immediate processes I directly experience, or it can encompass all the people I know and the things that I do. It can encompass all creation and conception. Whatever I'm comfortable with in defining my "self".

On the other hand:
I'm listening to my old grade school and high school LPs. Check it:

I'm ever upper class high society
God's gift to ballroom notoriety
I always fill my ballroom - the event is never small
The social pages say I've got the biggest balls of all

Oh, I've got big balls, I've got big balls
And they're such big balls, dirty big balls
And he's got big balls, and she's got big balls
But we've got the biggest balls of them all

And my balls are always bouncing, my ballroom always full
And everybody COMES AND COMES AGAIN
If your name is on the guest list, no one can take you higher
Everybody says I've got GREAT BALLS OF FIRE

Some balls are held for charity, and some for fancy dress
But when they're held for pleasure
They're the balls that I like best
My balls are always bouncing to the left and to the right
It's my belief that my big balls should be held every night
- Big Balls, Bon Scott-era AC/DC

Come on, let's see Modest Mouse or Death Cab write lyrics like that! These lyrics are sublime in their own way, even profound (in their own way). Think about what Bon Scott was a product of. Rock and roll was sure something different then. And that lascivious voice, those inflections. He was the embodiment, the voice, the caricature of degeneracy.

Of course he had to die before he grew old (unlike those doddering buffoons left over in The Who). There's no way that he could have lived to be old bones and maintained any credibility, any self or identity that he created. Ain't no one these days writing on this level.