Category: Words

It takes blood and guts to be this cool
But I’m still just a cliche’
–Skunk Anansie/It Takes Blood And Guts To Be This Cool

Thunderbolts and daggers!
–Jane Austen/Sense and Sensibility

Not being a cliché can be a challenge. Sticking out can be a problem for survival, even in a species with advanced survival skills like Homo Sapiens. This makes it unbelievably convenient and easy to slide along in life without an original thought or act to your credit. In fact, in environments like schools and businesses you are rewarded for conventionality. Sometimes it seems like the pull of life tugging you toward blandness is almost impossible to resist.

When I feel like I’m blending in a little more than I am comfortable with, I say something weird at work. Actually, the saying something weird part pretty much guarantees that I never reach a state of comfortable anonymity at work. Since I tend to say something weird pretty much any time I use words, I stick out any time I am talking. Does that make it a good or a bad thing that I usually don’t talk very much?

Defining conventionality, or rather unconventionality, is a little slippery. If someone points up at the sky and says “what do you see up there?” a conventional person might answer “a big fluffy cloud” or “it looks like it’s going to rain.” Someone unconventional might see anything up there. A fetus. A platypus eating a beaver. Jesus descending from Heaven to kick some ass. The snow in Montana. Anything.

Someone unconventional might not care that much about things like normal standards of grooming or hygiene. They might have flexible notions of time management. They might have a system of logic that is different than most people’s. They might be willing to do things without thinking about them very much. Or in spite of having thought about them too much. Maybe they’re an out of the closet atheist in a town full of Baptists. Maybe they’re willing to speak their minds even when other people are going to disagree.

Being cool is also hard to define. It’s harder to be cool than it is to be unconventional. I guess. I am pretty sure that I’ve never been cool, although there are people who are very insistent that I am. So one thing we know about “cool” is that it’s subjective. All of the cool people I know are also very unconventional, so there is a ton of overlap.

I have a lot of questions about defining cool.

Should cool just be? Or is it acceptable to try to be cool?
Does it take blood and guts? Yes, it does take metaphorical blood and guts for the part of cool that involves being different. No it doesn’t for the kind of cool that involves being a jock and knowing where all the good parties are. In my opinion only the “being different” type of cool really qualifies. Subjective. It’s my blog, though, so my opinions are given a lot of weight here. It’s funny how the cool kids mostly aren’t anymore, though, isn’t it? Some of them are very nice people, but not cool.

The coolest people in the world were probably never considered so by anyone they grew up with, so cool is something that you maybe have to grow into a little. Patti Smith, Lou Reed, Billy Zoom… I’ll bet they were a bunch of rejects and geeks. Billy Zoom plays multiple instruments and is into amp repair. I’m pretty sure he would have been a band geek. Patti Smith? Tall and gangly. Awkward. A little homely. Into poetry. Probably viewed as a total loser in school.

Billy Zoom never seemed to be trying all that hard. His guitar spoke for itself. Patti? Eh….there was a lot of working really hard at finding used copies of Baudelaire and Rimbaud and making sure she was poor. Spending that last dime on coffee and pie at the diner. Not a lot of people would dispute that she is cool.

Cool can tolerate being a little bit of a poseur, especially when the budding cool person is still just a kid.

So if you’re one of those people who feels like it’s a sin to deviate from standard in any way? I pity you, and advise having your head shaved.

Go on. It’s medicine.

PS No, it isn’t your imagination. I just sort of stopped writing without a graceful exit. I feel like reading. Right now. Sooooo, I was done and I stopped.

And when the night is cloudy,
There is still a light that shines on me,
Shine on until tomorrow, let it be.
I wake up to the sound of music
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.

People have been making music ever since we discovered how to make sound. Almost everyone likes some sort of music. Some of us have music completely enmeshed with our lives. It’s my daily meditation, my medication. It’s what keeps me more or less sane. It makes me tearful and joyful, and thankful that there are people who continue to write new songs for me to listen to and sing along with. It makes me grateful for the strange kinship of people who share a love for the same music. Life without music seems like an impossibility in the same way it must seem impossible for a religious believer to try to imagine life without God. I do not believe in God, but I am a big believer in Music.

Music is my church, and the lyrics are the liturgy.

“Let It Be” is one of the most emotionally wise songs there is. I’d put “in my opinion” in front of that statement, but if you argue with it I’ll just think you’re a dumbass. You don’t want me to think that you’re a dumbass, do you? No. I didn’t think so.

If I were to actually establish a Church of Music, “Let It Be” would be on page one of the hymnal. Not necessarily because I think it’s such a great song, although…well…it’s a great song. It would be on the first page of the hymnal because it’s easy to sing, simple and true.

My only real beef with Lennon-McCartney here is with their use of Mother Mary. For most people, Mother Mary would be “that” Mary. I’m not really sure that’s what they actually meant, but for me it’s a shortcut for saying that Mother Mary is the wisdom of all of us. People. I don’t believe in a diety, but I do believe in a sort of divinity of the human. So I guess if you want to get technical about it, it’s not divinity at all, but humanity. I think that Mother Mary’s words of wisdom, or God’s words, are ours. People. It’s all about people. Humanity. We literally wrote the books. All of our accumulated wisdom? It’s OURS, and one of the ways we share it is through music.

For me, the song is saying to let go of all of worry, resentment, hate and all of the stuff that holds us back and move forward with hope and faith in our Humanity. If you let it, it will be. Of course, it will be regardless of what you do. Yes, it was really me who wrote that. I’m a little baffled, too. It’s awfully positive of me. True though. I’m an atheist who believes in people. Even though…well…c’mon. You know there are problems in our Human Paradise, right?

We’re killing the planet we live on.
We’re killing each other all the time and for the most asinine reasons.
We put our own self interest ahead of everything else–which, if we take our self interest further than most of us do, and consider that the survival of the PLANET is important for us as individuals, is fine. Be selfish. If your self interest just means that you’re going to fuck the rest of the world so you can have a loft in SOHO and a Bentley? You’re a wrong guy. Or gal.

People are infuriating and amazing
Lazy and driven
Faithful and treacherous

The one thing you can count on is contradiction.

It isn’t a flaw –it’s how we are.
Embrace that like everything else.

It won’t change. It’d be like expecting a tiger to become a vegan. It’s just not what they are.

All the worry, all the stress, all the aggravation doesn’t do anything except ruin right now. There might not even be a next week, or tomorrow or in a minute.

Let it be now.

If it helps, sing along.

Mara and Cara are on the floor, their clothes nowhere to be seen. Cara sits up, moans, and opens her eyes as slowly as possible. It might still be practically dark outside, but that is still far too much light for her massively hungover head.

Cara has many questions of varying importance.

Where in the fuck are they? What is that awful smell? Where are their clothes? Who is the gorgeous giant looming over her? Why does he look so stern? Is he snarling at her? Why is there a giant at all? Why did they have so much too drink?

“What have you done to my Mara,”
the giant asked her, “and why does she smell like she is ill?”

“What do you mean, ‘your’ Mara? Who the fuck are you? Stop growling at me! What the fuck is wrong with you? Get away from me or I’ll call the cops!”

Mara stirred at the commotion and sat up. Like Cara, she moaned. Her head felt like she’d been drinking tequila for several days, which was not at all surprising given that she had, in fact, been dedicating a lot of time to the drinking of tequila. She had a feeling she would live to be glad that didn’t remember anything that happened last night.

“Sami, please. Stop growling–you’re scaring Cara and making my head hurt more than it needs to. Wait, you’re back! When did you come back?”

“I do not like this Cara. She has made you ill.”

“No. I did this to myself. Cara is my friend, she was just keeping me company while you were…away. We had too much to drink, and it made us sick.”

“Why would you make yourself ill, my treasure? You only weaken your body…This Cara has your way of speaking like a man.”

“Yes, we both use a lot of profanity. It’s what you might call a charming quirk. Can you see where our clothes are? I don’t really want to turn on a light right now, and Cara would rather not have you looking at her without her clothes on.”

Angels are not very expert in the after-effects of a ride on the tequila train, or the emotional disorders that make us take the ride, but they do see very well in the dark. Samael found a filthy pile of clothes and towels on the floor of the shower. They had both emptied the contents of their stomachs pretty thoroughly at some point during the night, and he did not think the clothes would ever smell clean again. Mara guessed she would see a large charge on her credit card for towel replacements.

They were in a very nice hotel, at least, and they had clean clothes hanging in the closet. Cara called downstairs for aspirin, clean towels, coffee and juice while Mara gagged and shoved their clothes and the towels into trash bags in an only partially successful attempt to reduce the stench of vomit.

This was not the first time Cara and Mara had woken up in a hotel room together suffering from tequila induced memory loss and headaches the size of Alaska. It wasn’t even the first time they’d woken up naked in a hotel room together. Usually they woke up in a bed. The floor? That was a first.

Mara had no idea what she was going to tell Cara about Samael. Maybe she would just go with a basic introduction and let him handle the rest.

“Cara, this is Samael.”

“Where in the hell did you find him? Does he always growl at people? Why were we on the floor when there’s a perfectly good bed right here? Why is he dressed like that? Is that sword for real?”

“The last thing I sort of remember is trying to get up to puke. I had to crawl over you, and I slipped. I think maybe I pulled you out of bed with me trying not to fall, but I don’t really remember. That’s just a theory. Maybe we hit our heads when we fell. Or maybe we were just too drunk to get up again. The bed is kind of freakishly tall. Based on all the towels and clothes in the shower, it’s a safe bet that we got up at some point to hose off. Or maybe that was before we even got in bed. The bed looks clean. Fuck, I don’t really remember anything past yesterday morning. Any story you invent will be as accurate as mine! As far as Samael goes, it’s a little bit complicated. Samael doesn’t wear a lot of clothes. He has what you might call a very alternative lifestyle. Samael, tell Cara about yourself.”

That ought to liven things up, Mara thought. The day was looking far better than she ever could have expected when she woke up. She couldn’t wait to hear what Samael told Cara.

If only they’d hurry up with the coffee.