What's Cool? @isitcool-blog - Tumblr Blog

MLA (Modern Language Association) style is most commonly used to write papers and cite sources within the liberal arts and humanities. This resource, updated to reflect the MLA Handbook (8th ed.), offers examples for the general format of MLA research papers, in-text citations, endnotes/footnotes, and the Works Cited page.

Everything you never wanted to know about MLA format and style.

isitcool-blog

Don’t forget! Final paper must be in MLA w/in text citation and MLA. Sorry to be a drag, but it’s important (I guess).

saigesaunders

where have we been? where are we going?

WARNING! This is gonna be a long ass post. Read on only if you dare.

Where have we been this semester? Who have we examined? Whose minds have we tried to get inside? Too many to count. So in preparation of my final paper for which I don’t even know where to start I thought I would make a post containing all my favorite people, poems, songs, outfits and pictures that I loved from this semester.

So lets start at the beginning. Who better than Nietzsche? My man. That dude was seriously fucked up and an old white dude which takes away from his likability but his quotes are some of my favorites because they are still so true.

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”

“Without music, life would be a mistake.”

“There are no facts, only interpretations.”

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”

“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”

“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.”

“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs, it is the rule.”

“The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously.”

“What is needed above all is an absolute skepticism toward all inherited concepts.”

“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”

“He who cannot obey himself will be commanded. That is the nature of living creatures.”

Can you say foreshadowing of basically the entire 21st century. This is the entire basis for the mook and the midriff. If you don’t control of yourself and who you want to be in this world someone will come into your house and feed you a consumerist product made for your generation.

—–

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. - Fredrick Douglas

I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs. - Fredrick Douglas

—–

So since I’m still here livin’, I guess I will live on. I could’ve died for love– But for livin’ I was born Though you may hear me holler, And you may see me cry– I’ll be dogged, sweet baby, If you gonna see me die. Life is fine! Fine as wine! Life is fine!

- Langston Hughes

—–

Oh and I have to include the O.G. cool man himself, Lester Young. The man who started it all. The man who mastered the art of improv, spoke in code, “wore sunglasses in nightclubs, sported a crushed black porkpie hat and tilted his saxophone at a high angle “like a canoeist about to plunge his paddle into the water” (Whitney Balliett).

—–

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative. - Oscar Wilde

Illusion is the first of all pleasures. - Oscar Wilde

The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. - Oscar Wilde

The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for. - Oscar Wilde

Lauren Bacall

—–

James Dean

—–

Marlon Brando

—–

Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, perhaps, in heart and life and longing… but shut out from their world by a vast veil. I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows. - W.E.B. Du Bois

—–

The world breaks everyone and afterwards many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry. - Ernest Hemingway

In modern war…you will die like a dog for no good reason. - Ernest Hemingway

What changed the world more than anything else. War.

—–

I am not a heroine. But I have chosen the person I wanted to be. - Coco Chanel

Dress like you’re going to meet your worst enemy today - Coco Chanel

—–

You don’t have to be born beautiful to be wildly attractive. - Diana Vreeland.

—–

The problem that confronts us today… is how to be one’s self and yet in oneness with others, to feel deeply with all human beings and still retain one’s own characteristic qualities. - Emma Goldman

—–

I force myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste - Marcel Duchamp

—–

Elizabeth Eckford, turned away from entering Central High School by Arkansas National Guard by order of Governor Orval Faubus, is followed by hostile whites, Little Rock, Arkansas, 1957

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion. - Albert Camus

I like people who dream or talk to themselves interminably; I like them, for they are double. They are here and elsewhere. - Albert Camus

Hang on, hang on… life’s long, energy creates energy, things are all-right, hunger piles up, love waits… and when found… grows. Hang on. - Jack Kerouac

Little Richard

Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes. - Walt Whitman

Many of the idols I have included in this post took this Whitman to heart. A sign that the rest of us should too. Keep your cool.

Woody Guthrie

Do you have a reason to live? One you would die for. Do you have a why to get you through any how?

Are we on the rise of a new revolution? Are we still capable of revolt to that degree? Can we still tap into the energy of the youth from the 1960′s? These pictures say maybe.. just maybe there is hope.

A central lesson of cool… suffering is not just a part of life… but most of life. However, we live in a society that makes us feel as if sadness is a sin. A society that instead of teaching us to utilize our sadness (muck to gold), tells us to hide it deep inside because it is a sign of weakness and vulnerability. And if you do tell someone… they will prescribe you drugs to get rid of it.

Black Panther Party

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. - Martin Luther King, Jr

You’re either part of the solution or part of the problem. - (Leroy) Eldridge Cleaver, 1968

Children have a lesson adults should learn, to not be ashamed of failing, but to get up and try again. Most of us adults are so afraid, so cautious, so ‘safe,’ and therefore so shrinking and rigid and afraid that it is why so many humans fail. Most middle-aged adults have resigned themselves to failure. - Malcolm X

John Lennon

Every society honours its live conformists and its dead troublemakers. - Marshall McLuhan

Bob Dylan

Come you masters of war You that build all the guns You that build the death planes You that build all the bombs You that hide behind walls You that hide behind desks I just want you to know I can see through your masks

- Masters of War, Bob Dylan

Pablo Picasso

People are always so boring when they band together. You have to be alone to develop all the idiosyncrasies that make a person interesting. - Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol and The Velvet Underground

Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, ‘So what.’ That’s one of my favorite things to say. ‘So what.’ - Andy Warhol

If I am being totally honest I was never a fan of Andy Warhol’s stuff before this course. I looked at it like a lot of people look at modern art and say well I could make that. But now I am realizing but I don’t.. most of us don’t.. make the effort to create anything, even just a silkscreen (or a silly drawing of a fish like Picasso would sketch). I also never took the time to think about why Warhol made what he did or what the significance of his work was in the time period. I still think he is a pretty weird snd freaky but he’s also probably one of the coolest people I have learned about. And sadly I don’t know if I ever would have made the effort to really look into a lot of these people if it wasn’t for this class.

Edie Sedgwick

Forever wishing I was this funky

Kurt Cobain

How many of us are just meat puppets really? Probably a lot of us. But we can make a decision at any moment to change that can’t we. Make a decision to change anything about ourselves at any moment. Endless possibilities.

If you made it to the end of this post. Bravo.

isitcool-blog

Saige recaps a semester in cool. What a generous public service! If you see her, say thanks, (wo)man.

the-mythical-norm

Responding to Varun

@varun-krishnan

Great post Varun, thank you for making disagreeing so enjoyable. I mean that sincerely. Its the things that keep you up at night that are worth doing. And its 4:30 AM!

Anyways, I see you’re point. When people are giving to chance to choose, they usually choose wrong. But I wouldn’t be so quick to say we’d all spindle into a grand canyon of ineptitude. If no one is “working” then who would supply us with our phones anyways? The entertainment industry would most likely dwindle because, like we both agreed, it is only able to thrive because we need it to distract us. But if we didn’t need to quench this thirst that was deprived from work and dread, we might go mad. Those friends you spoke with who were bored over spring break probably had copious amounts of entertainment, and it still wasn’t enough anyways. What if having nothing to do, because work and progress were thrown out the window, is enough to force us to be cool. The struggle is what births cool after all. We’d be so bored to death that we’d be forced to improvise. I think the reason people rely on Netflix and iPhones so much is because they don’t know what else to do. Without work they probably wouldn’t be able to have them anyways. People I’ve talked to have no idea what they’d be doing if not what they are now. You’re right when you say that they want the easiest route, but thats a byproduct of a society obsessed with progress. We need fast food, fast cars, and lame jobs to progress our society. In order for maximum efficiency and growth. The question then becomes, how beneficial is this growth? How far do we want to get? 90% of the worlds waste comes from 10% of the worlds population..or something like that. So how much longer will this last? How much more do we want? What will we tell our great great grandchildren when they’re living in a glass bubble on mars only dreaming of being able to look at a lake…or a tree? Obviously sacrifices need to be made in order for a society to progress, but at the end of the day, whats the point of this progress? How many of us will actually reap its benefits? 10%? 20%? And the ones who do, hate their jobs most of the time anyways. And its all worth it so we can squeeze some art through the cracks and take bike rides when we aren’t busy? What a silly way to live. Our society will eventually collapse if we continue to advance. Progress progress progress. At some point its got to give. The term worker bee was born for a reason. The focus of their existence is to work, work, and more work. They also suffer from colony collapse disorder. Theres no scientific explanation for it, entire bee colonies just vanish into thin air, with no trace of struggle..maybe its because they work too much. Or the collapse of Easter Islands society, progress is great when you’re progressing, but how “sustainable” is it anyways. Theres only so much resource. You seem to suggest that what we are doing now works, does it? Will any form of society actually work? Everyone relies on being told what to do because, like we talked about in class, its hard to think for yourself, its hard to get control over your body/mind, its hard to DO things that you aren’t told to do. Like post to this Tumblr.

Im not sure if people would turn to cool if they no longer had to work or go to college, but most people I ask usually say “I don’t know,” or that they would travel.

Im also not sure that art only existed after humans had civilized and advanced utility. Archeologists have discovered Paleolithic cave art dating 40,000 years back, in Indonesia. It’s pretty amazing too. The time spent looking for your next meal in 10,000 BCE is directly replace with time spent looking for your next pay check, and because of the efficiency we’ve “mastered,” excess has been born. Pablo Picasso was cool, but he was doing the best with what he had. He wasn’t making art to progress society, he was just putting it out there. We are obsessed with extremes, manic or depressed. Wealth or poverty. Cool trys to show us a middle ground, a constant hum rather than shouts a whispers.

You say that “..societal progress is critical not because it helps alleviate human suffering, but because it allows more people to be Cool..” But I disagree. Societal progress doesn’t alleviate any suffering, thats just part of the human condition. To rid ourselves of suffering would be to rid ourselves of our humanity. Which is exactly what we are on track of doing, becoming robots whose only purpose is to progress. On the contrary, In order for our society to advance, AKA produce more shit for the rich to buy, there has to be suffering. Most of these consumer products which blossomed from “societal progression,” have been tainted in blood. The invention of the iPhone has provided millions of sweatshop workers with 40 hour shifts and zero time to be cool..the only progression there is suicide rates. That sounds a lot like slavery, which still exists by the way, in India, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Uzbekistan, the list goes on. As for the starvation, theres plenty of that too. And way more people to endure its wrath, possibly because of societies advancements, what happened to Darwins theory of evolution, survival of the fittest? Are we cheating a bit? Even people who have access to food, still starve themselves. Eating disorders may have even stemmed from technological advancements (social media) too.

You say cool won’t progress society, whys that such a bad thing? It is true that the sophisticated and advanced society that James Dean or The Beatles could enjoy being cool in would seize to exist, but ultimately cool is a battle stance. What if there was no battle? What if we were so cool we didn’t even need I️t. I️ also agree that In order for cool to exist, there needs to be uncool. But does the uncool world depend on the cool one to exist? Its possible that we could become so dictated by success that become like the worker bees. You could argue both sides. When people don’t have food, they are starving, but when people do have food they are still starving. Of course cool needs the uncool and there will always be duality, Yin and Yang. There has to be, or else meaningfulness would be lost. If you just love everything and everyone, loves power sort of looses its meaning and just dilutes in its ubiquity. So I️ agree that cool has a relationship with the uncool, but I wouldn’t go as far as to say that its intimate. Im not arguing for a utopian society, where we live in tribes and sing kumbuya by the campfire, hunt our own food and refuse to advance. Because that didn’t work either, someone eventually decided to make things easier, and advance. Maybe that was a mistake. It’s worth thinking about, and free too. Im not really sure what im arguing. We can learn from all of these different forms of society. Maybe not eradicating the workforce but promoting genuinely passionate career paths. I’d be lying if a little part of me didn’t scream fuck that, advancement is only creating more suffering to the unlucky ones. As you said, slaves cant be cool. But Slavery exists on both sides of the spectrum. On the far end, we could become so obsessed with advancement that we become slaves of money and material pursuit, and on the other end(living in tribes), slaves of famine and lack of clean water. Maybe theres a healthy middle ground. Perhaps nothing works, not even cool. As we learned in class, cool cracked up in 1968. Revolution swept the streets. Those streets have since been paved, where did the rebellion go? We live in a whole new world now, Lester Young and Andy Warhol didn’t have iPhones or Netflix, and Im sure it would have negatively effected their coolness if they did. But their art wouldn’t have existed if society didn’t advance in the first place, so is there a line? There must be. Any form of suffering, to a certain extent, would allow cool to exist. Its not necessarily the marketplace because that was the bane of cools existence in the first place, I think. You don’t necessarily have to be cool to enjoy the sunset either, so cheering for the hamsters on the wheel to run faster, just so the barrier to cool is a little easier to hop, isn’t the best idea. That perpetuating wheel has A LOT of side effects and cool is just one, if it even exists. I️m not sure it’s enough to outweigh the rest. I think cool should view the culture industry as an enemy, and there will never be a cool that isn’t thrust upon you through hardship, theres no escaping that. Even purchasing your cool requires some suffering, as we can all agree that making money isn’t all that fun. Unless you love what you do. I think the real question we should be asking is, how can we learn from all of this? How should we be? to be continued in paper 3…

varun-krishnan

Responding to Zach

@the-real-tarzan

Great post Zach.

The question is what if people’s lives weren’t filled with “studying, test taking, being bored, working…”? What if people could do what they want all the time? It’s sad to say but humans are lazy, and for many people, I think a life without work would mean they would just become even more preoccupied with the entertainment industry that we’re surrounded by. Just look what people do in their free time when they’re not following the trail of yarn rolled out by society. People don’t take bike rides or relish in the sunset; instead, they tap tirelessly at their phones or stare lifelessly at Netflix. And part of that, as you said is a distraction from their unwanted life, but part of that is because it’s simply the easiest thing to do. It takes a lot of effort to be Cool, to choose sitting over a lake over laying in bed, and frankly, a lot of people are not going to voluntarily become Cool if the necessity for work suddenly disappeared. And this is not a new idea. Leaders all throughout human history have known that, if given a choice, people will take the path of least resistance. Those rulers knew that you had to force people to adopt a lifestyle, be that a lifestyle of work, a lifestyle of conformity, or even a lifestyle of Cool. A lot of the Cool people we studied over the course of this class adopted Cool as a result of necessity, they didn’t take it on because they wanted to but because they needed to. It’s funny but a lot of people rely on getting told what they do, and when they’re life is not dictated by some external force they’ll spend their time on their phones, or sleeping, or just being bored until they’re told what to do next. Do you know how many people I’ve talked to who said they were bored during spring break? Far too many. Is this a byproduct of the culture industry or will most humans just waste their time if they’re not forced to study or work? Would people even turn to Cool if they no longer had to go to college or to get a job? I don’t know the answer but from what I’ve seen of how people spend their summer breaks, which should be a time to slip from the choke-hold of the culture industry, even if just briefly, I think the answer is no.

I think Cool relies a lot on the side-effects of society’s preoccupation with work and progress. After all, the blossoming of art only came after humans had found a way to sustainably produce food, establish shelter, and efficiently utilize resources. And the more technology develops, the more people can focus on art. After all, I doubt you could be a professional painter in 10,000 BCE where the majority of your time was focused on how to find your next meal. And that trend continues today where the more productive, efficient, and technologically advanced humans are, the more people there are who can enjoy a bike ride or watch the sunset instead of searching for water or fighting off hunger. Yes, places like Africa which don’t have that benefit were actually the birthplace of Cool, but is that really the circumstances we want people to have to be Cool in? Pablo Picasso was also Cool and I think it can be universally agreed that the Cool lifestyle he could practice in a more advanced society is far preferable to the one forced upon to African tribes. And therefore, I think societal progress is critical not because it helps alleviate human suffering, but because it allows more people to be Cool. After all, if you were born having to get a job so your mother could have food, I can imagine it would be tough to escape the labor market in which you’re now confined.

And that’s the problem of Cool…it won’t progress society. If all our ancestors just acted Cool, we would not be close to the sophisticated and advanced society in which James Dean or The Beatles could enjoy being Cool. So I guess my question is, shouldn’t Cool actually want a certain subset of the population not to be cool? After all, people’s willingness to progress humanity by getting a job and contributing is what has allowed others like Brandon Davis to wander the country instead of worrying about how to eat. The United States has become advanced enough where even if you have no money you can still find a way to get food. And that can only be possible in a society that has a large portion of its people working to make that possible. So, with Cool’s classic paradox, does Cool need the uncool if Cool wishes to grow? Does capitalism have its advantage in the fact that when more people are running in the hamster wheel, that means more people can get off knowing that the wheel will continue to run? I think that uncool has an intimate relationship with Cool in the fact that the society in which Cool flourishes would fall apart if not held together by those who choose not to live the Cool lifestyle. And I guess this ties back to the beginning of the post because even if people no longer felt the obligation to make money or go to work, I’m not sure they would turn to Cool. And therefore, money has to excite people, or else society would stall and go backward till we are back at the point where the arts were just a luxury, and you didn’t have time to take a walk because you weren’t sure if someone was going to mug you. As sad as it is, if people didn’t chase money, then no one would work and the society in which Andy Warhol or Lester Young had the chance to become Cool, wouldn’t have existed. As we said in class, slaves couldn’t be Cool because they didn’t have enough freedom to do so, and so if our society doesn’t maintain its productivity and sophistication many people wouldn’t have the freedom to become Cool either.

And so Zach, I guess my extremely long-winded question is: Is the marketplace essential in the fact that it allows society to progress both technologically and socially thereby giving the opportunity for many more to become Cool? Do people who are uncool and propel the hamster wheel actually lower the barrier for others to become Cool? And hence, should Cool view the culture industry not as an enemy but as an unfortunate but necessary force to progress society and help others become and enjoy a type of Cool that isn’t thrust upon them through extreme hardship but rather adopted through a newfound freedom?

Check out philosophy prof. Elizabeth Brake as she seeks to open up and pin down Bob Dylan on the question of freedom and rebellion.

Everything you never wanted to know about MLA format and style.

Sigrid Nunez and the bohemian ideal...

I had this idea I was going to be a writer; if I couldn’t, there would be no point to my life. I had reached 30 and was having to face how hard it was going to be. It was nothing but rejection. My life was spiraling downward. I was breaking up with somebody — a long, slow breakup. We had a studio on Bleecker near Seventh Avenue. I also had a tiny place on 12th Street between Greenwich and Washington — the top back room of a falling-apart townhouse that the owner was renting out. I would go there every day to write. By the end of the relationship, I was living there. It was all exposed wood and brick, and it had a tiny fireplace, a futon, my books, a sink and a stove. It had no closets, so somebody put up a bar so I could hang clothes. The rain came through, so the clothes were all messed up by brown streaks. I tried to write every single day, first thing in the morning, 10 a.m. Plodding. I would write longhand, sit down at the typewriter and type what I had, take those pages across the room to a different chair, sit down and work between the double spaces, do another draft. It was a kind of a monk’s cell. I had no student loans and the housing was still affordable. You could work, then not work for a while, get by. That’s what I did. I didn’t want anything to be more important than the writing.

Read the rest here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/17/t-magazine/24-hours-new-york-city-1980s-life.html

On the death of avicii

In 2016, Bergling retired at the ripe old age of 26, the nonstop grind of touring having led him to alcoholism and severe health problems. I don’t think I’m the only person of my generation who could see themselves there in some alternate timeline. His death is tragic, and it’s unfortunate that we’ll never get another one of his heaven-scraping jams. But it’s hard not to feel like his passing is also the official passing of an era. The EDM of the beginning of this decade feels plastic, even predatory; meanwhile, the new kids of America are spending their 4/20 marching against the NRA. The ultracapitalist, gender-normative, predatory culture that informed my 20s seems more irrelevant than ever.

Read the rest here: http://www.vulture.com/2018/04/avicii-and-edms-promise-of-post-recessional-excess.html

The opposite of cool?

"I think he has an emptiness inside of him and a hunger of affirmation that I've never seen in an adult."

May 7th

On or before May 7th at 3pm, please turn in your final portfolio of work for the semester.

Your portfolio will include:

Paper 1 (and an optional revision)

Paper 2 (and an optional revision)

Paper 3

That’s it. Put the papers in a cheap folder and you’re good to go.

Remember on or before 5/7 at 3pm.

emmarunevad

Attempting to map out the change in cool

isitcool-blog

Thanks Emma. This is pretty cool.

Here’s a hyper condensed version of the capitalist cool take.

Tina Knowles-Lawson: Beyoncé wants to do "what’s best for the world and not what is most popular."

Levi's OPioneers! commercial from their new GO FORTH campaign. Directed by M Blash for Wieden+Kennedy, Portland using poem by Walt Whitman. http://homotograp...

coolescence-blog

isitcool-blog

This posted in your dorms, yes?

Where r we now...

KANYE WEST‏Verified account @kanyewest

FollowFollow @

kanyewest

often people working with the existing consciousness are jealous of those who are more in touch and they become hard-core capitalist in hopes of creating the illusion that the value of money is worth more than the value of time and friends

Final

Assignment #3—What we think about when we think about cool….

Look over all of your work from this semester. Look at your tumblr. Look at your papers. Look at the margins of your readings. In three or more pages, tell me what you see and what you think? What are your interests, concerns, questions, when it comes to cool. What would you like to think more about as you go forward? What can you do with the thinking you’ve done this semester? How might your thinking about cool reflect or even change your thinking about yourself, your interests in and concerns for the larger world?

Where are we now? Can you use the history and the ideas we’ve studied this semester as a lens for understanding or at least thinking about UM circa 2018. Why do we live the way we do? Why does the world look the way it looks? What is our world view? What is our ethos? Can you think about the world? Can you think about your own thinking? This is meta-cognition (thinking about thinking). Show me that you are capable of this.

Please be sure to include direct qtn. from other voices.

Please demonstrate both an understanding and the ability to employ course material.

Please make use of other texts both literary and visual.

Please engage in acts of creativity that might constitute a rebellion.

Please demonstrate the ability to use MLA citation tools.

Please think hard and write carefully.

Due last day of class.

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