This weeks post comes from a conversation with a group of friends. It is an explanation of my fascination and an attempt to lay out what it is that moves me....Please feel free to share your thoughts...........
Nestled inside the turbulent history of the 20th century a new thing arose to challenge the status quo and cause the world to stop and wonder at its new direction-Hipness. Hipness was a form of detachment from societal norms, an exploration of thought and feeling independent of Old World values. It was an unforeseen reaction to the new found wealth and shifting populations of the Industrial Revolution. It's propagation, the result of the new medias of radio and film. For the first time in the history of the world communication moved at the speed of light. What Orson Welles said on New Jersey radio could completely freak out half of a nation...instantly...it was a new era...and the genie was barely out of the bottle.
From the Lost Generation of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway, who eschewed the morals of Post WWI
America, to The Beat Generation of Kerouac and Ginsberg who felt the same separation after WWII, hip was made concrete in the age of jazz, in the restless movement from city to city, from coast to coast, from New York to Paris to Tangier, from The Sun Also Rises to Mexico City Blues.
The Beat movement, in particular, became a world wide phenomena. As the writer, William S. Burroughs, put it, "It came from a world wide realization that modern society sucked."
This mental rebellion led to the birth of the counterculture movement in the 60's. When hip evolved into a total way of life for a generation...complete with its own set of values, self determined and set on a common cause, the end of the war in Vietnam.
Now, this is where my generation comes on the scene-Generation X. The generation born to live as a bridge between centuries. A generation who grew up at the dawn of the Information Age. A generation whose mental make-up evolved with evolution of the mass media, from 4 T.V. Channels to 400, from dial up internet to Wi-Fi, from rotary phones to the Android and I-phone.
For the most part, I'd say we've handled these changes well. Most of the people my age I know are tech savvy, though, to varying degrees. I, for one, don't have a cell phone. I have two e-mail accounts, a Facebook page, a Twitter page, and, of course, this raggedy blog, but, I truly don't feel the need to be at anyone's beckon call, anytime, any place.
I guess it's just one of my many quirks...........
So, what does all of this have to do with Hip, you ask?
Everything...............
See, my hip, my bliss, is pretty eccentric. The most obvious is music. I love Rock-n-Roll in all of its various guises over the past 50 odd years. I can dig on Elvis just like I dig on Judas Priest or The Stones, The Beach Boys or The Beatles. The Doors, Springsteen, Patti Smith or Prince...I'll crank up Sly and the Family Stone just like I will Black Sabbath. I'm as apt to put on Stevie Nicks as I am Slipknot. I like the Blues and Swing as well as Classical music. The only thing you won't find in my music collection is Country, not that I have anything against it, it's just not my cup of tea.
It just never spoke to me....
I'm just as eccentric in my tastes in literature. These days, I lean toward more modern works, but I have whittled many hours away engrossed in the works of Mark Twain and Alexandre Dumas. I prefer H.G. Wells to Jules Verne. Of course, I grew up learning which one had better hit the future's mark, but, in pure literary terms, Wells wrote in a more modern style, consciously attempting to distance himself from Victorian models...once again, kids,....hip.
More writers on my literary hip list would include all of the Lost Generation (Scott Fitz over Hemingway) and all of the Beats (Burroughs' manic surrealism over Kerouac's self conscious confessions) The new cool centers around Douglas Adams (R.I.P) (Thanks for all the fish!!) Chuck Palahniuk, Greg K. Bear, the venerable Stephan King, Brett Eliot Easton, Scott Card and the newest kid on the block Don Peteroy!
In the realm of film, hip was there from the very beginning! In the 1910's and 20's, understanding the implications and opportunities inherent in the new medium was completely hip. The visionaries were there from the very beginning; Max Seneca, Chaplin, Fritz Lang, Buster Keaton, Cecil B. DeMille, onward to Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, John Huston, Billy Wilder and Stanley Kubrick, onward to Mel Brooks, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Blake Edwards, The Wachowski Brothers, Wes Andersen, and Quentin Tarantino. The films made by these greats would be way too long to go into, but, the most unique, fantastic, heartfelt, funny, visually and emotionally stirring films I've ever seen all derive from the men on this list. Time with any of their works is time well spent.
And, to end this rather lengthy offering, I will leave you with a short list of my favorite comedians, the ones who live up to Mel Brooks' well coined, stand up philosophers: Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Bill Hicks, and my new favorite....Ralphie May.
As you can see, the new hip encompasses the whole of the history of hip. All of the outsider beauty of all the generations of soul geniuses spill down through the years, all of their permutations relevant in all varied forms.
It's like Bruce Lee's Jeet Kune Do. It is a form that encompasses everything, while in and of itself contains nothing.
I like that....the Zen of it.
I think The Great Beat Granddaddies would approve.
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