The Birth of Cool and The End Game

 I’ve been on something of a tear lately.  It’s undoubtedly indulgent, perhaps even profligate.  But I have my reasons and at least some of what I’m writing today is about what’s prompted those decisions and choices.

I’m been “finishing off” a lifetime’s pursuit.  I was born during the Birth of Cool.  Thanks, Miles.  You may be that true icon of cool but there were others and they played their parts.  For me it’s still coolness, that’s my word.

 

It’s not stuff that makes you cool.  It's not the toys or the acquisitions.  You can be way cool with almost no cool stuff.  But I do think that the stuff helps you feel cool, it becomes another way to tell your story, it helps the picture tell the story, no matter what you say or do.  What we’re seeking in coolness is our power especially when those feelings remind us as much just how vulnerable we really are.

The Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca called the journey duende.  Let him tell us: “The duende, then, is a power, not a work. It is a struggle, not a thought. I have heard an old maestro of the guitar say, ‘The duende is not in the throat; the duende climbs up inside you, from the soles of the feet.’”  And how you literally put on the duende is not beyond its powers.  I have always thought it comes from the soles of my feet ‘cause there’s nothing like a cool pair of shoes to feel the ground beneath you.

 

I think Hendrix---yeah, this seems so dated, but he often called that feeling “groovy.”  You have to add Jimi’s voice to get the right effect.  Listen to him talk to his audience.  “You have to give people something to dream on.”  That’s it, Jimi.  I heard you. Nowadays some younger I call these things, those feelings, those experiences of power “dope” or “fly” or “lit.”

I can’t say any of those words without feeling I’ve violated some generational code that makes the old guy look stupit [sic] trying to be cool.  I think that’s why I still say, “Wow, man, that’s cool,” and if I’m feeling particularly Hendrix I say, “yeah man, that’s groovy, really groovy” using my best Hendrix voice. I reserve that voice for close friends on too much tequila late nights or early mornings.

 

Since I was a kid I’ve wanted things that I thought made you cool or spoke to your coolness.  Anyone else remember those funny, square colored granny glasses that Roger McGuinn wore for the cover of The Byrds’ 1965 Turn! Turn! Turn! ?  Likely not.  But I bought that record in mono ‘cause in ’65 that was tw0 whole dollars less than the stereo version and my grandmother gave me the loot.  Beatle boots came around the same time.  Movies, most of which I saw in black and white on TV, brought the influence of all The Usual Suspects: Dean, McQueen, Newman, Connery, then Pacino, DeNiro, and Caan.  

 

By 1970 I was thinkin’ mostly in terms of gangsters in suits but really it was always (and it still is) about the rock’ n’ roll. The Beatles started it but I grew up with the Boss.  And I think Springsteen is still the guy I look to.  He’s my Icon of Cool.  That’s because of where he has been just ahead of me, those eight years aren’t too much older, so when I saw him as a kid, I saw my future and I’d say, “Yeah, that’s cool.”  I still see that.  Of course, now he’s an old guy but so am I.   We’re not dead yet.  There’s more cool to be lived.  The hunt isn’t over, there’s quarry (some) still in sight.  But a lot is done and it’s time to put in some good miles with that good stuff in hand.  I feel lucky that the end isn’t in clear sight but the End Game has clearly begun.

 

I might be rationalizing aloud but confident I’m not the only one giving reasons to do things or buy things that are not “necessary.”  Life reduced to necessities raises all sorts of moral issues we should never wish on anyone faced with such facts and choices.

 

What shall we do with the time allotted to us?  Always phrased passively, we know we’re not in complete control of fate, right?  When we’re lucky we make bucket lists---things we hope for in love, for personal experiences, for the things that bring us pleasure.  We need to figure out how to love life ‘cause there’s every reason to believe no one gets out alive.  

 

There are all sorts of ways to assume Bartleby’s stance.  Need I remind us that “I would prefer not to” in Melville’s coolness is a protest from one “who obstinately refuses to go on doing the sort of writing demanded of him.”   Living only in the banality just won’t do when you can risks another kind of life, a life of more interesting questions.  Ah, the humanity.  We might also refuse to take anodyne obligations and inevitabilities seriously but when has that ever made matters better?  That is not cool.  But thinking about what’s real about this mixed up, muddled up, shook up world?  That is cool.

When the young prince Siddhartha faces the first three of his Four Sights---old age, disease, and death---he is at the tender age of 29 deciding that life waits for no one to decide what to do next.  Not all of us go on to see the fourth sight---the anchorite, the seeker for what lies without worldliness---and decide we too should renounce worldliness.  I often wish--- after a hard day’s night and at least two drams that I had taken the Buddha’s advice but instead make do with being an ordinary materialist.  You likely are too, no matter your minimalist tendencies.

 

We shouldn’t ever forget the George Carlin bit about stuff, about how we collect stuff and need more stuff to put our stuff in, go on vacation to get away from our stuff and come home with still more stuff.   Of course things can’t make us happy and we may get too much exhilaration from the chase but what’s life if not a series of expensive mistakes?  Well, mistakes punctuated by moments of Pyrrhic triumph.

 

Now to the goods.

 

I’m mean not to miss the chance to corral a few things from the Amekaji world that are on the-hard-to-acquire list, because such things come only in small batches often on unpredictable time lines.  This is what happens when you seek handmade craft from small shops or companies that are more interested in getting it right than just getting it done.  There are some old guys who do this but in Japan there are also some younger artisans who think it’s cool to make things that will last and that are done without compromise, brilliantly.  Their journey in some says depends on our journey, that is, those who are willing to track them down.

 

Those of us interested in Amekaji vintage workwear usually refer to our passion as a journey.  This is because it takes time not only to learn and evolve one’s own style, but because---let’s admit it---we usually make a slew of costly mistakes.  But you can get help if you can just give up the idea that you already know yourself.  It’s way cooler to know that there are people who do this everyday who can help you.  

Educating clients is no small task when you are trying to sell them expensive jeans, t-shirts over 100bucks, and boots that can easily tip a grand (umm, or two).  But for an increasing number of us, the most sought-after bits often sell out minutes after they are launched if only because inventory is as scarce as crow’s teeth.  There’s more than a price to cool; there’s the desire that comes from the duende, from the groovy part of the soul that just wants it.

 

It’s not unreasonable to think that a leather jacket or the right pair of boots well-used and well cared for will out-live most of us.  Some of the best vintage examples are already more than 75 years old.  We would expect the best things to carry on.  This durability could also be true of certain denim, wool shirts, and other bits that have been grist for the mill of  “fast fashion” for decades now.  We haven’t expected those things to last, much less get better with use.  And this is an important feature of what has changed, dare I say for the better?  We are in the Golden Age of denim, boots, and leather---at least it’s better than it’s ever been in my lifetime.

My journey into a better, fewer world has centered on some of the most durable and in some cases the most sought-after oddments.  I’ve been at that task now for a while---more than a decade---but I’ve spent a lifetime chasing my grails.  I stilllike fast wheels, time keepers, cool clothes, and soulful music. 

 

My tastes have changed only at the margins since I was teenager but that’s because I came of age when leather jackets, work or riding boots, and selvedge jeans weren’t oddities, they were just how those things were done. I got my first Schott Perfecto in 1975, the same year I got my first boots from Frye. I can’t tell you when I scored my first Levis 501s because, along with my Type 3, but I’m pretty sure it was the Summer of Love and even though I was just a kid, I was busy.

I was fortunate too to have an older brother who along with his friends set the standard---though I think they lost the plot or “evolved” to other styles when I was sure I’d landed on my island.  For professional reasons, I’ve ventured into fancy suits, not just for weddings and funerals, and a whole lot of tweed and Oxford shirts but those things too fall inside the Amekaji world nowadays. 

 

But to be frank, I’ve arrived at my patina years.  If I have any hope of putting some serious patina into a new jacket or boots there is, as Aubrey frequently says to his pal Maturin, not a moment to lose.  This is the year I get my Medicare card.  I think I have one more leather jacket in me and just a few more pairs of boots---but I’m darn close to the closet I’m likely to leave the grandkids, well, if they want any of this stuff.

 

The Brass Boot Company of Tokyo that makes Clinch just made a short film about the guy who inherits his grandfather’s boots.  Lemme tell ya’, that hit home.

 

So what I’m going to do in subsequent blogs is actually review these grail pieces of mine, tell you why I think they represent my version of cool as I play the End Game, and how they compare with other things I’ve lived with since the very day I thought to myself, “Now that’s cool. That’s what I want to be, what I want to look like, how I want to carry on.”  That first day was February 9^th 1964, and it all happened at my grandma’s house starting at about 8:13pm watching The Ed Sullivan Show.  I don’t have an end date but I do have an End Game.  That’s where we are going next.