Subject 2: Frolicking Ethiopian Goats Are Hip

Hip needs an audience to bud.

Kaldi was the audience.

 His goats, the spirited dancers who inspired a simple choice:

“Do I eat from this cherry tree or not?”

The goats performed the devil’s version of the “Lindy Hop” and with no lightning bolt to strike his hand from the tempting bush,

he ate.

 One taste of wild, red berries sent a jolt of revolutionary energy and this is the beginning of coffee’s history.

Coffee.
There is furniture dedicated to it.  That is hip.

Coffee continues to inspire the arts in the forms of foam designs, songs, paintings, poems, books, movies, perfumes, wines, sugar scrubs, enemas, and especially the hands of hipsters and all others who take up space in crowded cafes and Antarctic excursions.

 

I will not go into the full history of coffee,

list the various brewing techniques, and/or discuss the different regions coffee beans come from. 

There are countless other blogs who have had the dedication to find all of that information

and organize it in a way others will understand.

http://www.sallybernstein.com/beverages/coffee/kopi_luwak.htm

http://www.coffeeresearch.org/coffee/homegrowing.htm

http://www.2basnob.com/coffee-information.html

http://www.squidoo.com/historycoffee

I am the parasite to my percolator
therefore I am not willing to watch the steam bellow from this fresh, brewed cup of coffee for more than
five minutes
only to fill a blog with coffee bean rubbish. 
The senses of taste and feel awoken by a brown, liquid magnificence
overcome the need for intellectual brain absorption. 
However, for those unfortunate souls who are not currently engaged in this sensory stimulation,
I’ve provided a blend of nutty, observable, robust, and auditory tastes that are always complimented with a dash of spice. 

Le Cafe

“May your coffee and slanders against you be ever alike--without grounds.”

Is it hip to question?

"What is Hip?"

Entering the door into a Liberal Arts land of college English lovers with few other brave, curious onlookers, Professor Weaver, the leader, asks us the question, "What is hip?"
The group answers in the call-and-response tradition brought to us from a long forgotton empire.  

My immediate answer is, "I am not hip and if I am, it is by default." 

Then a florescent image flashing in the driver's seat of my most judgmental vehicle, the 2011 Frontal Lobe, spoke and the 20/100 Occipital Lobe, complete with black rimmed corrective lenses, graciously gives me one image:

This is it.

The essense of hip. 

 Why this guy?

He is the face of every grown-up man and woman.

He is the still budding boy and girl who I have found living in the

live, Indie-Rock, steaming stew pot of concert goers and record store junkies. 

After my first week of hard earned education and paper reading, I've kicked this image out of his polyester chaise lounger, made him trim the hair out of his eyes, and freed his junk by taking him shopping for pants that fit, functioned, and did not offend grandmas and/or 24 year old virgins.

 "Free The Junk."

 It's the hip thing to do.

11 p.m. Mountain Time, USA

It's officially here.

I give you...

The Hipster. A poem   

You see

de "Niggers" couldn't write in dem days

Language

slaves Bent and Coded.

Pink man, a Honky

Emulated black.

Black tried on white.

Black English,

Rich and Deliberately Ambiguous.

Entwining freedom and sorrow,

Words didn't mean one thing or another,

They meant

What the speaker said they did,

Irony and Humor

Africa combined

Joy and tragedy,

Dance and Song,

A missing element,

In white America.

Erotic encounters,

From terror to mutual affection,

Everything,

But a  Balance of Power.

The Place of Cultural Exchange,

Was Often The Pillow.

Any lady will tell

The father in everybody’s household

But her own.

Mulatto children,

She seems to think,

Drop from the clouds.

Africans absorbed,

The  Western Cult of Individuality.

A wild hustler,

The  Trickster,

Was shared by a nation

Built by mavericks and runaways.

A group

Pulls together

Against the outside world.

Pure Africa or European

Receded into a Cycle of Mutual Influence

Minstresly:

The central vein

Of American popular culture.

Given from those crude outpourings

Of  Racial Fantasy.

This company,

A colored man appearing before

A white audience

May be instrumental

When removing prejudice.

A  Recognition of Humanity

Replaces Ritual Negation.

Put on your smile and

Obedient “black” mask for

Slave owners.

African Americans began

This  Racial Pantomime.

White performers’ mold

The mask of race.

Love and Theft

The way we talk

Or sing

Involves not just white caricatures of blacks,

But black parodies of whites.

This is

American popular culture.

We are not bound by out pasts,

With The Promise of Reinvention.

The  Ripeness and Rot

Of the Mississippi Delta with its muddy soil

Is the

Cradle of the Blues.

Presley’s record

Looked forward to the modern,

With outrageous commerce in celebrity and image,

Movement of sex from private to public,

Explicit play of white and black music,

The question of theft.

Modernity in the Delta,

Is zooming by

When you’re not looking.

Preacher and sinners squabble,

With  Rhythm.

Early slave cultures in Africa,

Gave away secrets

Even as it harbored them.

It remains a

Universal language.

A free man

Could sing his own song,

Tell his own story.

Emerging individualized music

From folk ballads to

The Blues.

An act of

Spontaneous creation

By Rebel Geniuses.

Charley Patton,

Pursues booze,

Devil music,

And appreciative women.

Blues musicians were

Folk Antiheroes

In a landscape of their own invention.

An early profile

Of the hipster:

Ditching plantation work,

Living by their wits,

Transforming themselves into image.

A layered language developed,

A signal of sorrow and transcendence

In the same breath.

An admired outlaw,

Showing disdain of proper black society,

They boasted the

Illicit Enlightenment.

I constructed this poem as a personal reflection of the most important points to hit on regarding the idea of hip.  It is a super duper summarized version of

Chapter One: in the beginning there was rhythm

Slavery, minstrelsy and the blues

It comes from the book titled:

Hip: The History

By John Leland

http://www.harpercollins.com/books/Hip-History-Mr-John-Leland/?isbn=9780060528188

Check it out. Or stay tuned until next Wednesday night when I may or may not summarize Chapter 2 in the form of a poem. Ask your hip friend which form of media I’ll use to convey answers to hip questions.

He may know before I do.

Subject 1: Genisisiamaticalology

You don't know you want it yet, but it's coming...