We all want to be cool.
We start with an idea; a thirteen-year-old us, a pout poured from an amalgamated mold cast of James Dean, Kurt Cobain, and Paris Hilton and a collective influence of the best and worst of our superficial unofficial reality. We choose our pre-packaged identity from the bin of trendy hats that let in the rain and don’t quite fit, and herd with the other sheep in wolf’s clothing, taking turns following the inept shepherd-du-jour. We define ourselves based on these hats, the identity we’ve subscribed to and try to paint the world around us with a brush of glittered color and sound of our own press.
We have no idea what cool is.
Cool is the secret aspiration of every member of our society, intangibly transcendent beyond wealth and station, that very few would admit to wanting for fear of diminishing the perception of their own coolness. We do our best to keep it balanced and protect it from toppling like cards in the first gust of wind. It’s the thing we all can be and should want to be. Cool is in charge, cool is independent, cool is successful, cool is victorious.
Cool is expensive horseshit.
The cool is a fallacy. The very attempt to ascend into one of our society’s hallowed fantasy hats is by definition a contraction of cool itself. Adorning, pretending, mincing, portraying, purporting an identity that is not a natural part of your core is insecurity and denial, and about cool.
The place for cool grows out of our pack mentality. Every bit as important as the instinct to seek dominance among the other dogs is the need not to appear weak. Survival isn’t just about being the first to the meat, it’s about making sure no one bites your ass while you eat. They say most humans fear the stage more than dying, or far greater yet, then being ostracized.
Sometimes being ostracized is a service to the pack. Sometimes an attempt at cool deserves a cold reception.
Did you ever want to reach back to that younger version of you, that strutting and posturing adolescent peacock with a regrettable haircut, and just slap that little bird silly?
Cool, in terms of an ethos, falls somewhere in between Plato’s ever-evolving always redefining Dialectic and the newest shade of pink worn by a pop-princess’ tiny toy dog.
We seem to, on a psychotically repetitive basis, reinvest in these disposable catalogue identities and false magazine idols. We retract our hand from slapping that former self in the head and promptly grip our fingernails into the next big thing already falling out of coolness in the hear and now.
We all want to be the guy they swoon over or the girl all the others envy and hate just a little. We all want to fit in, be accepted, and if possible be talked about, be watched, be revered and be sung about when are gone. It’s part of a need for attention, conceit, and sometimes a wholesome need to make a time above the dirt worthwhile.
I wonder if they had cool in the old days? In the days before we worried about the needless things, the color coordination of our shoes and handbags, the things we say to those we view as less cool.
Well, to take a wild stab at a subject beyond my reasoning, of course they did. It’s a part of our nature as old as competition, as long as Cane’s jealousy, Narcissus’ narcissism, and the need to get down with the Hebrew’s golden calve.
Now I could talk for consecutive eons about the misplacement, corporate takeover, and eventual portioning and redistributing of cool. I could wax happily about the name brand that best defines you while it undefines the fine just fine… But I won’t. Today is for the cool, the cool that we forgot, the cool that always seems to be brought back to our attention when we’re too old to make amends.
I find myself confronted with making a point on this one beyond a little op-ed self-satisfaction, because self-image seems to something that is becoming an increasingly under-funded resource in the increasingly significant adolescent market-demographic. Beyond making a point: can I make a difference?
There is a requirement for cool. There is a requirement for an understanding of cool, as outlined in this ‘cool man!’-ifesto, to occur when maturity fungifies and it almost doesn’t matter. It’s supposed to be a labor, a journey, and a struggle. As it seemingly becomes more of a tangible commodity it should be administered with some guidance.
Here is the point: Coolness, there’s really no such goddamn thing.
Think of where cool comes from: Teenagers defining the norm largely from role models who rejected the norm because of the rejection and alienation or uncoolness they faced as teenagers.
Cool is the ultimate example of the human instinct of fickle following. We seek a leader and perpetually seek the leader’s undoing. In the rarest of examples, the hero retains a divine level of interest with his/her subjects, but as seen in the best divine example of cool, once that crown slips, the followers are seemingly only too happy to tear that cool asunder.
We have nothing to fear but cool itself.
It’s one of the great paradoxes: You try to be cool and completely obliterate any chance of being cool. When you finally reject pursuing the mirage of being cool, and become secure enough in your own identity not to care, you’re there.
It’s like love. Seek it and you’ll never find it. It affects all of us but is none of ours to possess, and it is largely to blame for most of the movies that annoy the shit out of me.
Fuck cool. It’s that easy. Love, that’s probably trickier.
Coolmaster P
