On Coolness and Chilling Effects

Both the possibilities and pitfalls–or pratfalls– of the “lifelogging” phenomenon fascinate me. While recording is not publishing, the possibility of publication squirms around in every record.

I think of Joe Queenan’s idea of the tyranny of good taste and of people who “act as if the rest of humanity is watching their time sheets.”

Consider this, in matter of the recent attempts to log every thing one has ever done:

I’m driving home from Kowalski’s. While the sticker on my back window says “The Current 89.3,” I am listening to a vintage Kassey Kassem on the Oldies station. A new song starts. I recognize it immediately. “Timothy” is a tale told by a young miner. He and two other young miners were trapped in a collapsed mine for days. His friend Joe mentions that he would kill “for a piece of meat” and the narrator points out “Timothy, Timothy, he was looking at you,” repeating “Timothy” because you can emote twice as much in six syllables. At this point, the narrator faints like a teenybopper at a David Cassidy concert. When he awakes, he sees light. He and Joe are rescued. Timothy is never heard from again and, weirdly, no one asks any questions. The song ends,  “Timothy, Timothy, God what did we do?” 

Why didn’t I change the station? Why did slightly more people buy this song than the Janis Joplin song which preceded it? God, what did we do?    

I think a certain amount of junk in one’s cultural diet is a good thing, just as a quorum of germs evidently keeps us healthy. As a writer, it might be worth noting that successful trash is doing something right and to try and figure out what it is. ("Timothy' has a hook, a story, and a sense of urgency.) But there’s also the “bad” art which is good but uncool  (Glen Campbell, Roger Miller) or good but not serious enough for the If it’s Not Kierkegaard, It’s Krap school (Batman Begins, the first Pirates of the Caribbean).

I also think I may need to reconsider my disdain for Joe Queenan. This essay rocks.

Comments

Timothy. I loved that song -- by the Buoys -- when I was a kid (it came out in '71), even before I picked up on the cannibalism angle. I think their group name was more clever than the song itself.