there is a difference between “hip” and “cool”.

between “being hip” and “being cool”.

hip cats know it.

people worried about being cool don’t.

and hell, i do, fer sure.

it’s like the difference between fashion and style; between following the ever-changing but buyable trend or having your own sense of personal and self-generated bada-bing.

between being “spiritual” and having “soul”.

between having money and being rich.

hipsters pride themselves on “knowing what’s hip”.

people who “try” to be cool are more often, clueless sheep.

hipsters don’t care what others think; coolsters do.

hipsters live on the edge, maybe slightly over the edge, a little out of control, they push the boundaries, the norms. they gravitate to artists who do the same.

dylan, picasso, miles, brando. these cats were hip. single names. invented new forms. defined hip for their generations.

britney, christina, travolta, cruise, one names too, but only cool for a while. in and out of fashion.

do you have to be black to be hip? poor? dispossessed? an artist? i don’t think so. but it helps, of course. not having – is motivation, drive, ambition. makes you hungry. it demands you live in the moment, no cushion; it helps you invent new forms.

not that fat cat rich people can’t be creative or invent things. they can. and do.

but henry ford wasn’t hip. nor nelson rockefeller. nor even jackie, bobby or john f. kennedy.

ray charles, sam cooke, otis redding, john coltrane, andy warhol, jackson pollack; the cats were hip.

the opposite of hip – square, daddio.

from the old beatnik days. not too far from “uncool”, but still different. “uncool” – not in fashion, not fitting in with the pack. a nerd, a geek, someone different, someone ostracized. someone judged on the way they look or behave. but more externally so.

a “square”? not too different… but more philosophically so. someone who just doesn’t get it. doesn’t want to. won’t try. sex, drugs, new music, new ideas. anything new, out of the ordinary.

“no, not for me.”

george bush – square. proudly so, but square nonetheless.

conservatives in general, fundamentalists, not hip.

folks who follow the biblical and family tradition. people who won’t think for themselves, or who, when they do, end up only with what was handed down, thought before.

are you hip, babies? have i hipped you?

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what the fuck, trules? who cares, you say?

are you the self-appointed cyber arbiter of “hip”?

well, no. definitely not.

but you see, i’m afraid i’m losing my hip.

my right one, to be exact.

to long term, chronic and painful osteo arthritis.

to a hip – replacement.

to a hip replacement i’ve been avoiding for the last three or four years, even though i’ve heard it’s the most highly successful joint replacement procedure going.

i mean, who wants to replace their hip?

i certainly don’t.

i’m hip enough, man.

i’m pushing 60 and i’m still wearing black 501 levis with the button fly.

i mean, i saw jazz piano genius, mccoy tyner, and african singing maestro, salif keita, both, in a single week at LA’s hippest and most edgy edifice, frank fucking gehry’s disney concert hall.

i mean, i married a young beautiful indonesian princess, 30 years my junior, married for the first time at 54 to a brown-skinned beauty who hardly spoke any english and who seemingly had none of my cultural or generational hip-ass references like dylan or elvis or king or brando or picasso or miles or coltrane.

i mean, if that’s not hip and edgy and risky and out of fucking bounds, my main messieurs et madames, then i don’t know what the hell is?

_________________

but yeah, i gots to replace my hip.

five days in the hospital, two months recovery. crutches, pain, physical therapy, rehabilitation, more pain.

all to reduce the pain i gots now because i’m losing my hip.

no more cartilage.

seems i wore it out from seven years of forced turnout – of my hip – when i  was a modern dancer, age 21- 28.

now i cain’t gets me outta no car without de pain.

i cain’t play me no tennis like i done played for forty years of my life.

i cain’t run, i cain’t sleep, i cain’t stretch, dance, even walk in de park widout de pain.

i needs me a hip – replacement.

you see, i’ze getting old.

like i sez, pushing 60. and i keep rememberin’ back when i was 25 and my pops was turnin’ 55 (five years younger than i am now).

it was my pops’ birthday, and he was standin’ in the long beige hallway, outside my cowboy yellow painted boyhood bedroom.

he poked his still young head in and said,

“i can’t believe i’m turning 55 today. it seems so old. and i still just feel like little joey trules inside.”

and i remember that. ‘til this day.

it was so strong. and so surprising. that my dad, my father, 30 years my senior, still felt like a child, or maybe a teenager, inside his head.

and that maybe everyone feels that way as they grew older and older year after year.

still feels like “little joey trules – inside”.

and that maybe it will be the same for me.

that when i turn 55 or am pushing 60, that maybe it will be the same.

still feel like the much-younger version of myself – inside.

not feel like all the years my fully middle-aged bodied had accrued. even though it definitely – will have. 

___________________

and my dad is going to be 90 this year, still 30 years older than me, his first-born son.

amazing how he keeps ahead like that.

and his body is barely chugging along, after 3 heart attacks, 2 aneurism operations, after prostate cancer, after losing his dear and only wife of 57 years to a stroke, at age 78 in 1999.

he’s still here.

i wonder if he still feels like “little joey trules – inside”.

almost 35 years further down the line….

honestly, i really doubt that he does.

but i promise myself to ask him this year on his 90^th ,

or on father’s day in june.

_______________

and what the hell?

am i not hip anymore?

do i dig john maier or kanye west?

yeah, sure.

but i still listen to jazz and often think rap, hip hop, and house are limited and one dimensional.

do i give a damn about branjelina, the war in iraq, or the warming of the planet?

(no to the first, yes to the next two.) 

or does it even matter?

what will i be, what will i become, with my artificial, new-fangled hip?

will it get me back on the tennis courts?

get me down in the hilly terraced gardens of echo park again, planting tomatoes, spinach, and zucchini in my backyard sprinkled with the ashes of my mother and hip, criminal uncle harvey?

will it afford me some old school or new school bedroom acrobatics with my young, still learning and still growing wife?

and what if the operation goes badly?

will i end up with a bad hip?

be terminally hip?

terminally un-hip?

and what finally, does it mean to be hip? to get a new hip? to have a new hip? to give up one’s old hip? one’s hipness?

to grow old? to lose one’s  loved ones? to age? to die?

parta life, you say.

fuck america, with its obsessive pre-occupation with youth. with it’s neurotic, unrealistic fear of death.

look at mexico with its day of the dead. the dead come back for a friendly annual visit.

look at indonesia with its hindu balinesian cremation ceremonies, where they believe the penultimate part of life’s journey is into the eternal afterlife.

these cultures and people don’t fear death; they respect it, accept it – as part of life.

now that’s hip, eh babies?

whataya think?

drop me a “comment”, eh?

(un)hiply yours,

-trules

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