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Looking around me I was beginning to feel the vibe going on in the bistro as people were milling about. It registered to me as Kool not Cool with a 'C'. While Kool is an alternate spelling of Cool, it's also a name for menthol cigarettes. Kool.com website's banner features a surgeon general's warning, young couples partying, and the words, "Welcome to the Party".
I glanced at my partner, whom I consider Cool, and said quietly, "Sometimes Kool people are just entitled people. Whatever happened to really cool people." Bob Dylan was playing softly in the background. He's cool now. When he started out as a folkie, people thought he was a fake, a white boy from middle class America who hadn't worked a day in his life. It's not cool to measure working on one's craft, whatever it is, only by the physical exertion it takes to do it.
The place we were sitting in is a welcoming place but I wouldn't call it cool because, back in the day, it was really the artists and their freeform expression of art that made a place that way. Those meeting places flourished by word of mouth through artists and creatives. Weren't they called 'happenings'? The cool vibe was seeing outside the box, experimenting with cultural norms, religion and pushing the boundaries of what people thought was acceptable. The cool people wore cool things but there was no dress code as long as it screamed antiestablishmentarianism. They expressed themselves with everything they were and had, in speech, clothing, music, poetry, and sometimes with help from hallucinogens. They pushed the boundaries of reality in their quest to express themselves and their art.
Since I was only 10 in the early sixties and was not exposed to the Beat scene, I relied on Robert Inchausti's book, Hard to Be a Saint in the City. It would be helpful to define some words and concepts of the day:
At the heart of this re-visioning of American letters resides Oswald Spengler’s eccentric, magisterial opus The Decline of the West—a book that greatly influenced both Kerouac and Burroughs and provided the vocabulary and conceptual framework for the very idea of a Beat Generation. Inchausti, Robert. Hard to Be a Saint in the City (p. 2). Shambhala. Kindle Edition.
To be beat is to live a spiritual (i.e. cultural) life in a civilization increasingly deaf to its own ideals—a civilization gaining in worldly power but losing its character and its soul.
Inchausti, p. 5.
The Beats came of age just as the United States—in order to win a world war against its fascist enemies—had reorganized itself into a security state. The ensuing Korean War only increased this move away from democratic values, and as a result, the Beats found themselves, like every American coming of age in the late forties and early fifties, caught between a new mass-mediated consumer society and their own aspirations for a life of personal freedom and self-expression.
Inchausti, p. 3.
I wouldn't want to go back in time to experience the Beats. I think it would have been too strange, too wild and too uninhibited for me. Today, however, America is sounding more like that generation as both Americans and Canadians wrestle with who they're going to elect to lead them in the coming years. The anti-establishment viewpoint is still freedom but it has been corrupted to mean a blatant personal vendetta against anything that stops one from doing what they want regardless of who it hurts and what the consequences or societal norms are. Thank goodness owning a gun is not considered a fundamental right here in Canada.
You might have guessed that this post is a poke at Kool, as in trendy or trending or looking Kool without paying attention to the spiritual aspect. Seriously, being Kool is now very lucrative. All the life style shows were buzzing about a recent wedding that went way over the top to be cool and trendy. Millions, maybe even billions, was spent to have the very best, the latest, the most expensive and lavish wedding ever seen outside monarchies. Added to the nuptials were imported and very trendy guests and participants. Trendy musicians, clothing and jewelry designers, floral and display designers all were invited or paid to be a part of this massive spectacle. Was this event meaningful in any way to the two people getting married? Perhaps, but it felt more like players on the trending stage making a move, like takeovers on Wall Street or politicians changing parties to get ahead. It left a dry, stale taste in my mouth.
The cool people disrupted the status quo in the fifties and sixties. They brought us experiences that helped slow us down and think more deeply about our lives and the meaning of the universe even if we didn't agree with every Beat. They made us think and question. Perhaps we're heading into another period like that where we need to question the influencers, the trendy people and the distribution of wealth. It seems like we're on a speeding moving sidewalk, the kind you see at large airports, scooping up and consuming the latest stuff to add to our overstuffed closets and houses. What would the Cool culture say?
"In Howl, Ginsberg denounces what he saw as the soul-less, money obsessed obscenity of American society."
The poet, William Everson points to the spiritual side of the day in a kind of Jungian way. He talks about surrendering to a call, vocation, or purpose through submission and our own vulnerability bringing our power inside to be able to effectively work and do what we are being called to do:
… the call is answered only through surrender and this is done only in faith-submission to your own vulnerability, which is terrifying. Only in surrender can you suffer invasion by the archetype invested in your vocation, your link to the mystery of futurity. For instance, the vast world of medicine is made up of many professions, but the archetype of the Healer stands behind them all. It is this symbolic core, this nucleus of psychic energy, powerful, austere, mysterious, challenging, that must be surrendered to or its power remains simply “out there,” not a part of one, not invested in the finger tips, the touch, where it must be realized in order to be effective. So too with the poet.
Inchausti, Robert. Hard to Be a Saint in the City (pp. 168-169). Shambhala. Kindle Edition.
I wonder what is will take to bring us back around again to soul and surrender in this age, this time? Who will our children's children consider cool enough to become inspiration for them? Who are the poets, musicians, authors and thinkers that will be quoted in years to come, if there are years to come? Maybe we could be known as the 'Feat' generation as it would take a lot of extraordinary courage and strength to combat climate change, argue about the heart of democracy, implement closing tax loopholes for the ultrarich, making fact checking mandatory in all news or news-like programs, or lastly, implementing a working policy on gun control. The noun 'Feat' comes from the Latin facere, meaning 'make do'. Today, it gets applied to a deed that's noble or out of the ordinary.
Wow, our visit to a bistro started a rabbit hole about what it was and is to be Cool. There was no judgment, as my thoughts went immediately to past experiences with Cool and Kool people. Perhaps those seriously walking the walk and seeking authenticity, truth or answers to the issues of today should be known as 'Feat' people, as inspired by the 'Beat' people.
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