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4/4/11

Thinking Out Loud

Being trendy is uncool...

Cool is not being in vogue and anti-cool.

The last thing anyone would call me is trendy but some do call me "cool." Even my twenty something nephews think I'm cool in whatever the vernacular of their generation is. It is an enigma to me how I obtain that assignation, especially since I write phrases like that...

All I can think is that I am called that by some people because I am, I suppose, a classic kind of guy. That is, in several ways, at least. I tend to stick to things that are timeless and "classic" while still always being open to new things. They often become classic. I adopt things a lot of my boomer generation doesn't, such as I'm pretty decent at computer stuff, smartphones, video editing and creating a website blog content. I suppose classic could also mean I'm pretty old for hip stuff even though I don't listen to Classic Rock. It was good then and occasionally good to hear it again but not all the time especially as a radio format. To me that means being stuck in time and I have never liked that, preferring to develop and grow, moving on down the road to the next stop.

Even still, I don't chase trends, know a lot of new music and follow current TV show and movies. I'm not very wired in that way. Mostly I don't seek it out but I do discover new music (to me), for instance Mumford and Sons or The Avett Brothers, through some happy connection. My basic wardrobe hasn't changed much, just updated to suit the times. Also TV has always bored me, my attention span doesn't care for most popular movies and I don't hang out at popular venues to find out what the latest and greatest stuff is. Neither do most of my friends, they must be uncool too.

My conclusion is that although I know my age, I view it as a marker on how far I've come and grown, it doesn't define what I should and shouldn't do. Trendiness though really is for young people and the pretentious in New York City and Los Angeles that like vaporization. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try new things if it suits you. I am open to always learning and trying new stuff if it's interesting and makes sense to me. Maybe being cool is not following the latest new thing and tossing it aside for the next thing that comes along, but adopting what is new that is classic and worth keeping, building upon it and ignoring the rest. Uncool then becomes pursuing up-to-the-minute latest and greatest rage and cool is really being anti-cool.

Arizona Landscape

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