In case you hadn't noticed, over the last 5 years 'Cool' has
become a very ubiquitous, easy-to-own commodity. Let's face it,
everyone is 'cool' these days. It's also the most overused word in the
western world, a sure sign of its bastardization. Cool is easy to
market, sell and to certain degrees achieve, with the right look,
stance, sound, you are ready-made cool - just check out how many Sienna
Millers there are walking down the street or how many Beyoncès there
are in the charts and you get the point. This is not a good thing. It's
making us all the same - so when will we get tired of looking at each
other? Whereas pop culture used to be about celebrating differences,
now they are hard to spot. Cool and Consumerism go hand in hand -
people believe that to be 'cool' they have to buy a massive amount -
you have to have the 'right' bag, shades, jeans, t shirts, cap,
accessories, ipod, car - it's never-ending, not to mention expensive.
What is infinitely harder to own is creativity. The truly creative
people of the art, fashion, design and music scenes - these are our new
heroes. Creativity is looked up to nowadays. Creativity is Cool (ha
ha). But in order for these people to flex their genius, they need
something magic, something you can't bottle, manufacture, package or
sell, no matter how much those celebrity magazines would love to sell
it to the masses. What we're talking about is inspiration. Once
inspired, these people are producing work that really astounds us, that
takes us someplace else, that moves us, that thrills us, that in turn
inspires us do something great.
Getting inspired in today's culture is no easy task. It's hard to be
fresh when fresh has become a commodity, when happiness has become
fashionshaped, and fashion has shifted from niche pursuit to
easy-access shorthand for cool. Like pulling up your hoodie to get an
instant toughness boost or feeling 10% smarter because you've got new
shoes on. The old signifiers of youth style and culture - music, and
particularly, fashion? have become easy-access.
In short, everyone has become fashion-able. Not fashionable, you
note, just able to grab hold of this week's trends with a lunchtime
purchase of some cheap white pumps or a faux cameo necklace. Super-hip
stylist Christiane Joy claims to have almost dropped out of the global
in-on-Monday, out-by-Wednesday fashion roundabout, preferring jeans, a
shirt and less obvious signals to her style: a pair of sneakers
customized by a hip friend, or pumps in just the right shade of blue.
Perhaps that's the answer - subtle as the new black. It's an argument
that old-school music purists have had with the Limewire generation
since the first Napster file-swap happened. Forget the days when it
took commitment to get music (ever thought about how hard it was for
Mick Jagger to get those Muddy Waters records?).
The sheer volume of music that's available to all of us might irritate
the purists but it hasn't dampened music's ability to inspire us, nor
has it turned down the creativity of acts making music now. As Stewart
Copeland (of The Police) points out, "the quantity of music available
has gone up, but the quality is still there". The early noughties have been characterized by a stampede
of bands (just think about The Flaming Lips, The Gossip, even bloody
Justin Timberlake now he's hooked up with the on-form-again Timbaland)
that have blended the boundaries between genres and stamped right over
the old ways of expressing ideas, transmogrifying ideas and creation
into files we pop onto our iPods.
It's crystal clear: the most interesting movements express an
individual's own world and morphs their universe into a fabulous new
song or into dresses with great big spheres instead of sleeves (thanks
again, Gareth Pugh) or, well, whatever. The crusade against the forces
of conformity and control is taking place in homegrown mixtapes over
mix CDs in the supermarket, fanzines over mega-magazines, high ideas
over the high street. And the ideas will keep coming, they have to.
Recognizing true creativity when you see it, nourishing it and
encouraging it to grow, is the only way to beat the frightening forces
of things like the pop idol machine, high street fashion
factories and lookalike magazines and models. Do your own thing, keep
reaching up for those high ideas and never look over your shoulder;
because that's what being fierce and being creative, is truly all about. By Emma Warren and Elizabeth
McGrath
|
INSPIRATION NATION 
Monday, 12 March 2007 
Delicious
Technorati
Digg
Stumble