Cool is charisma, not po-facery
We’ve all met ‘em when moving in social scenes when we were young adults: those effortlessly stylish types who kind of hang around and say very little, seem to know all the most prestigious and popular people and be in the most prestigious and popular places – and never EVER crack a grin. At anything. Maybe you didn’t actually want to be them; but you felt as if society felt that you should be wanting to be them – and the fact that you weren’t like them at all was enough to give you a vague but permanent inferiority complex. You know, those gits.
You may also have had the joyous revelation, possibly after encountering these young po-faced cools when you were into your thirties and less easily impressed, that the reason these people say very little and crack no grins is that they are either really rather dull or really rather insecure. That is what all that style and aloofness is hiding. You continue to run into them, but now they are younger than you and they look positively frightened by your give-fewer-shits maturing confidence and wise-cracking ‘real talk’ about, like, actual life and stuff (or maybe your jokes are just bad).
Either way, the equating of cool with po-facery is bullshit. There is this kind of basic trope on comedy shows and in perfume ads that cool people all strut about pouting behind shades; but outside the rarefied fantasy world of high fashion, it’s nonsense. That cliché of 'cool' is rather like that kind of British soap opera idea of 'sexy' which involves actors of limited range laying on the fake cockiness with a shovel and an alarming leer, that in real life would make you think they were cheesiest, cringiest, creepiest dick ever to attempt seduction – the glib media stereotype is an unconvincing caricature by people who don't quite know how to capture 'cool' or 'sexy' as it actually comes across in real life.
The people who actually make a lasting impression of cool, the people that people really want to be like – say, George Clooney, Beyonce, Audrey Hepburn, Steve McQueen, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Mohammed Ali, Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Jackie O, Jimi Hendrix, Prince, Bowie, Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, Lou Reed, Siouxsie Sioux, Kurt Cobain, er, Kim Deal out the Pixies – are cool because they have charisma and talent. That may be charisma and talent that taps into something particularly zeitgeist at that point in time, like punk rock or film noir or break dance or a retro Parisian lifestyle, yes; and yes, these people most often look good and dress well (though not always); but that is not enough. What makes Tom Hardy cool is not his looks or his muscles or his clothes – countless forgettable Hollywood himbos have that – it’s all the other stuff about his manner and presence and energy and all that, and also his sheer acting chops. What makes Lady Gaga cool isn’t that she’s aloof and (yes) poker-faced (haha), it’s her otherworldliness and bonkers out-there creativity combined with that high-style stuff. These people have something of a different order to those cooler-than-thou but thoroughly mediocre mimics that just aloofly ape their surface details.
It should also be said that fashion (even high fashion) and trends (even serious ones) should be fun and exciting, otherwise what’s the point, what’s the draw? And also: sense of humour is most often utterly key to charisma – there are very few 'cool' people whom you could subtract the wit and playfulness from without removing all their power. Joyless cool is poison. Cool without fun is kryptonite. Those po-faced posers looking cool in their cliquey cool bubble at that cool party you went to when you were 23... you know I’m not sure now that they were ever really that cool. They certainly thought they were; we don’t have to believe them.
Nothing interesting or exclusive is happening in da club
Certainly one of the elements involved in young people’s idea of 'cool' is lifestyle – that cool people are so cool because they are constantly going around having these amazing cool experiences with other amazing cool people in amazing cool places. Anyone familiar with the humblebragging, holiday selfies and filter fetish of people’s 'look how great my life is' behaviour on social media should know that much of this is an illusion: at most fleeting high moments selected from the complex and difficult maelstrom of everyone's lives, pinned like butterflies as if they’re representative of every species of their experience. Us jaded oldies have been around long enough to know, for example, that excessive flash is always hollow and fame is certainly not all it’s cracked up to be.
There is this sense that cool people party harder (and still wake up looking gorgeous the next day) because they are wild and free and sexy and dangerous and having mind blowing high times that us mere mortals can’t even imagine... but the more I think about this, the more I think this trope is just the lingering remnant of our naive youthful excitement when we were yet to experience any of this. Because I don’t know about anyone else my age or older, but 'partying hard' gets more and more repetitive and yawnsome with every year that goes by. Sure, this feeling is in part because the hangovers are now like having two days of Australian flu, so it just doesn’t seem worth it; but it’s also because you’ve been there and done that so many times and frankly it doesn’t change much, that kind of activity, wherever you are or whoever you’re doing it with – you just get physically more battered and more like a broken record doing it. I would not change my younger experiences for the world, and I do think I learnt a lot about life, myself and other people from them, but hedonism can only take you so far when it comes to revealing esoteric knowledge and the secrets of life – before you’re just befuddling yourself and repeating the same old shit, addictively, like an ageing Britpop covers band who still think Oasis are the most relevant band in the world.
A case is in point is the ridiculous trope of 'da club': that paragon of exclusivity where all the rich and important and gorgeous party animal people go and sit around looking cool and gorgeous and guzzling champagne and snorting powder and dancing all sexy and hooking up for amazing sex. You do know it’s just a darkened room with the music turned up loud and lots of people off their tits in it, don’t you? Acting like people always do when they’re off their tits... like nobs. Don’t you? That is all it is. Beyond the flashy veneer nothing very interesting or exclusive is happening – I'm pretty confident that rare and valuable life-transforming experiences that hold the key to lasting enlightenment and happiness are not thence; deep and meaningful knowledge that will reveal the true nature of this existence is not being imparted behind those intimidating club doors – there’s just some wankered wankers flashing their cash and egos around and trying to get in someone’s pants, or trying to grab a little more over-priced 'high life' for themselves with their gasping little hands. That’s all. If I had all the money and time in the world there are certainly lots of new and fascinating experiences I would seek out; that isn’t one of them. It’s just some people off their mash in a dark room, with some beats.
Fashion is, and has always been, silly
The standard stance on the cool fashions of young people is that, at the time they are 'cool', they are indeed the most exciting and interesting ways of being: cutting edge, hip and completely appropriate. But as time marches on they become tired, dated, inappropriate, naff and silly, which is why you look back on your old self and go “Ha! Ha!”
But here’s an idea: what if the main issue is not that culture has changed, but that you have? What if those cool fashions always were silly, but you were just too young to see it? It strikes me that the way you cringe and sneer at what you thought you was cool when you were 16 is very probably much the same way your dad reacted inside to the very same stuff but at the very time it was happening. Your olds knew that “That’s radical, dude!” was ridiculous coming from the mouth of a 19-year-old from rural middle England, just as your Gran’s mum knew that “I dig that hep sound, daddio!” was ridiculous coming from the mouth of anyone who wasn’t a jazz musician and your Dad’s dad knew that “Whoah, those are some heavy vibes, man!” was ridiculous coming from the mouth of pretty much anyone at all... and just as you know that “That’s bare sick!” is frankly nonsense coming out of the mouth of a skinny pale teen on the 'you' tube – or your own 13-year-old step-daughter. To some, mullets, leg warmers and shoulder pads never looked good, so it must seem to them like everyone else only finally got the memo 10 or 15 years later. To some the skinny jeans, big-shouldered blazer, Mr Whippy hair and hipster tattoos combo has always looked teeth-grinding. To use the parlance of our times, “Just sayin’.”
By jaded middle age, image and transitory fashions matter less – or at least should matter less – and over-earnest idealism looks naive and pretentious – or at least should. The issue is not only a generation gap of understanding, but a time gap of credulity and maturity. You get better at seeing beyond surface, more cautious at getting swept up in enthusiasm for all-talk-and-no-trousers bullshit. A poser is a poser no matter what clothes or words they are affecting, or who is hanging around them or 'bigging them up', and you get better at spotting them for what they are.
This means your relationship to old idols can change. For example, on re-watching a daytime TV interview with John Lydon (née Rotten), conducted just after he had quit the Sex Pistols and formed his new band Public Image Ltd, it struck me in a completely different way 20 years after I first saw it: when I was 21 the fact that he stormed off in a huff mid-way through looked like a furious, edgy call-to-arms against the stupid, stifling mediocrity of a corrupt and square society; now I’m 41 it looks like a pompous, self-important wallflower being a dick to some nice, straight-forward people for doing their jobs – getting disproportionately angry that he is not being asked the 'right' questions about his art. I just thought “Pick your battles John” – there is lots to get righteously furious about in this world, and “Oh they asked me about my former band when I told them not to” is not one of them.
That isn’t to say that I don’t still love many of my former heroes, or don't have many of the same passions I’ve always had, or don't hold close and fondly the things that I identified with and that gave me joy when I was pupating; only that I tend to take them less seriously. In fact some of the people and things I could not bring myself to like for cool or fashion-tribe reasons when I was more credibility-selective I have now developed a fondness for, or finally actually get. In fact I’m not down on fashion at all, really – in its glorious silliness, its variety and restless inventiveness, its pomp and nonsense, it’s a sheer delight that I love to hate; that persuades my po-faced face to crack a big grin every time I talk about it. Dig it, daddio.
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