2007-09-02

koganbot: (Default)
2007-09-02 07:07 am

Please help me figure out what I mean by "cool."

Please help me figure out what I mean by "cool" (and by "rock" and "swing" and "punk").

I posted this in response to a post by [livejournal.com profile] braisedbywolves:

Cool is as dead as God )

But in this post I was making a basic mistake, thinking of a particular type of insight or practical behavior - "coolness" - as a group or class characteristic; this confusion pretty much saturates my screed. Of course the "cool people" as a self-defined group aren't going to be all that cool, most of 'em, just as not all swing swings or all rock rocks, and why so little punk rock had much to do with what I originally liked about punk, and why so little "critical thinking" is intelligent. So once again, maybe you guys can help me write my next piece figure out what I'm talking about. And I think there may be an analogy here, "coolness" getting uncool as it is assigned to a particular group of people, FM rock failing to rock as it becomes tied to the well-coalesced freak group c. 1968, punk getting worse shortly after becoming the music of the punk rock movement, etc.
koganbot: (Default)
2007-09-02 07:11 pm

An American observer writes

An American observer writes that all previous definitions of "poptimism" are superseded by the following:

Poptimism is baby on dancefloor )