Aesthetics of Cool

Woebot

Well-known member
polystyle des said:
'cool as in (example) 'grace under pressure' and cool as in (example) ' in the know, superior to others' -
these descriptions don't seem so very different ...
Cool, you know when you see it , so Matt , I'm not sure you were off rolling things somewhat together.
now you mention it
tongue.gif
 

Woebot

Well-known member
simon silverdollar said:
they don't see the people that they are better than as their equals. that's why they're so condescending or patronising. that's why i hate them.
maybe theyre just in a different headspace
 

Backjob

Well-known member
I believe the starting point on this thread was "traditionally we're down on people who collect music in order to assert some sort of superiority (which we can label cool) but maybe that search for superiority through music taste isn't intrinsically a bad thing"

Then there was a bit of chat over exactly what cool represents, and where it came from.

But going back to the beginning - I agree, I think it is a good thing.

Aside from what it means to be a "cool person" I think it's interesting to look at what "cool taste in music" or even "a cool record collection" means.

It's usually got one of the following meanings:

1) A prescient and cutting edge sensibility
2) An obsessive focus on an obscure musical back alley
3) Bizarrely eclectic and unclassifiable
4) An exclusive focus on music that is canonical to an 'elite' group

I don't think there's anything at all wrong with purposely pursuing any of the first three. And actually they all represent either an admirable triumph of discernment or a disciplined and extended commitment, which in any other field would certainly be laudable, so why not in the field of music? Unless we think that listening to music is a worthless activity compared to, say, playing snooker...

And further to that, this kind of activity nurtures and sustains new and obscure music, 'rebuilding the ladder'.

I definitely think 'cool' needs rehabilitating. Disparaging cool is like being one of those annoying student-y types who hate on people for caring about clothes.
 

luka

Well-known member
it's true the discussion got sidetracked and i think you've pretty much summed up what matt was getting at that there. so, now that;'s done i'll quickly sidetrack again. cool, in the other sense of the word, the one matt wasn't inteding to discuss, is all to do with social interaction as performance, so it is completely artificial, but, perhaps, not much more so than anyone else's [ersonna, its just an act which is more highly polished, the actor is more accomplished, more in control of his effect on his audience.
 

redcrescent

Well-known member
@ sufi
That book looks interesting, I'll look out for it. Thanks.

WOEBOT said:
couldnt agree more with this. its an intensely artificial position.
On the other hand, some people can't help being cool, even if what they do is 'anti-cool'. It's in the eye of the beholder, I guess.
We think people who bring home masses of obscure vinyl and find joy in connecting musical dots cool, but for most other people this is trainspotting behavior of the worst kind.
 

dominic

Beast of Burden
childOftheBlogosphere said:
in that it softly creates new imaginary worlds within our inner most consciousness, makes us, to quote Toop again, more aware of our non-verbal selves . . . . And isn't this what it really means to be cool, to be in a state of 'enlightenment', so to speak, and to make us better equipped to tackle lifes many tribulations? Surely the accumulation of cultural capital, of cultural credit, is merely the fickle residue of this quest, which can at times given the content of the listener's character, override the initial purpose of discovery, and which does, at face value, happen to appeal to others. But isn't the very fact that it is appealing come from this first reason? That people, on seeing someone devour culture, think that they must be a 'cool' dude whos coloured and enriched their life with music? :D

i think the above gets pretty close to the core. people who make music or who are really into music are, so to speak, on a different "vibe" than others, or at least this is how they imagine themselves (and how we, or I, imagine them) . . . . the vibe comes from being "more aware of our non-verbal selves" . . . . and yet, if we don't "dig" to one extent or another the music that a person is into, then we'll likely regard him as less cool than others . . . . moreover, commitment to music is not the only factor. as luka persuasively argues above, cool is a matter also of style, personal mannerisms and bearing, ways of speaking, how a person dresses. so it's not simply about music . . . . but i think that at the core it is about being into music, and having that space in one's head. and because he has that space in his head, because he's on that vibe, he is supposedly better able to keep things in perspective, so that nothing unduly fazes him -- and that's what makes the person cool. and yet without the right clothes, he still won't be as cool as others. and that's how it is (and therefore should be).
 
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dominic

Beast of Burden
and yet lots of introvertibly cool people don't keep things in perspective, and are quite easily fazed. for instance, miles davis. no definition of cool is satisfactory if it cannot account for miles davis, on the one side, and the cool dread carribean guys, on the other. plus, all the white people we think of as cool . . . . so, yeah, there's some kind of weird racial thing going on as well. that is, blacks are more likely to be "cool" than whites, and blacks with carribean backgrounds seem to be the coolest [but this last statement is obviously based upon my own narrow experience]
 

dominic

Beast of Burden
and in the States, there's also what is known as "Asian Cool." But that seems to go more to what outsiders perceive as aloofness, rather than from the supposed space in the head, the inner vibe
 

dominic

Beast of Burden
so, i'd say (1) into music, (2) openness to drugs, use of drugs, (3) personal bearing/manner, and (4) style of dressing
 

zhao

there are no accidents
with the passing of each year, i feel myself increasingly less concerned with being and looking cool.

you?
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
That's a good trend, as it were. Mostly "cool" as it is commonly taken consists in the fetishising of the alienation of oneself from being able to be who one really is, and from expressing what one is truly feeling/being terrified of that. It's the opposite of passion, which is why it's a very apposite word.

Whereas being genuinely sorted is the ability to be oneself, no matter how that makes you look in the eyes of others. ie genuinely not giving a fuck, rather than pretending not to whilst the search for approbation is in fact consuming one.



(Zhao, your music is on its way!)
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Aren't the biggest hipsters the biggest nerds? Aren't the coolest people the most downtrodden? I see being cool as a way of finding a different hierarchy that you can sit at the top of when you're at the bottom of the dominant one.

very well put. No one needs to express their superiority to another human being if they feel secure. Modern life gives few such securities/validations of self-worth, being as it's obsessed with telling people they're not good enough.
 
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zhao

there are no accidents
in the experimental music scene of big cities i've lived in (LA, NYC and Berlin), there seems to be always this inner circle of weirdos completely committed to being the Opposite of Cool.

you know what i'm talking about, don't you?

for instance at the Sublime Frequencies show last week there was this girl wearing bright pink overalls, like for a baby, with hand written kanji on the front, and really bad sneakers.

in LA there was and probably still is a group of people who similarly wear the most ridiculously un-cool clothes imaginable, the opposite of hipsters and fashion mags.

does this exist in London???

this could have gone in the clothes thread i realize but it's also to do with music scenes... :slanted:
 
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