The Man who made Cool
Could very well be Clint Eastwood. At least for sure it aint Elton John, well probably for some. A lot of other cool people come close and im sure most of yall will have your own definition of who made cool but to many, the crude silence and effortless poise of the Man With No Name is Good Bad and Ugly all at the same time.
OK irrelevant/lame spaghetti western cliches will stop here. But seriously, what is with the zeitgeist and its constant obsession with the emulation of iconic individuals? I know some gay guys like to emulate Boy George and some others do Freddy Mercury (well not in the literal sense obviously). I know a lot of old school rockers go after the Slash look; Derek from Wildfire for instance. Some people dont necessarily emulate other people per se but they sort of encompass a general ‘feel’of how to act and sort of combine things from all over the place and come up with their own style. I’m guessing Saint Fallen is a combination of grunge/goth rocker, emo/death fascinated poet or something. Maybe its Marylin Manson.
But icons don’t necessarily invent cool do they? they just define it. They show you how its done. What’s cool probably stems from something deeper in the collective human conscience. Something that is as part of us as the desire to make money, or the drive to mate. This ‘thing’ probably has a lot to do with culture, and how it is defined from time to time; i.e the zeitgiest. So we appear to have come full circle.
So if the zeitgeist is defined by the aspiration of the collective human conscience of what the ideal human should be like then does that mean that these iconic individuals actually emulate the zeitgeist? Or do they create it? Defining it through their actions and words as they inspire millions by what they do?
OK that was a bit of a wtf question. But yeah, who made cool for you? and why?
Abdul Khaleq 
why worry (or even talk) about this?
whole subject ( if there is one) is nebulous and undefinable.
and more importantly, useless, unless one wants to attract customers ( that includes “mates”) to ones good and services on a superficial level.
but when it comes to fundamentals and real interactions images and emulations will not work.
most fundamentals on a ‘fundamental’ level are themselves nebulous and undefinable. The laws of physics and other sciences are probably an exception. But even then i say probably. and why not talk about this? Image is everything in this branded world of ours. whether its marketing, literature, the arts or politics.
Lemmy!
well he’s a badass, but for me, personally… NEO!!! 😀
and I guess Kurt Cobain, besides the part where he killed himself -_-
Oh. I thought it was Hugh Hefner who defined the whole “cool” thing. Maybe I’m seriously out of date on the whole thing…
🙂
It’s an interesting point you make. I also notice that there would sometimes be a “cycle of cool” where people who find a particular thing to be “cool” will congregate and that group will define their own definitions of it. Non-conformance with that results in no longer being “cool”.
Which to some others, is “cool” itself.
Does that make sense?