This topic of indie-yuppiedom has got me thinking about “being cool” again. Coolness is one of the enduring paradoxes. I think it’s fair to say that anyone who wants to be cool isn’t, but that leaves an awfully slim field of cool people, certainly a lot fewer than are acknowledged as being cool. Not that being cool and being acknowledged as cool are the same thing. But wait, don’t you have to be acknowledged as cool to be cool, as it is a social definition? Kind of like being a hacker (with that reference, I demonstrate the extent of my own uncoolness).

Yes, very confusing. And all these indie-yuppies, if that is what they are, provide fair examples of the dangers of this confusion.

I present, for what it’s worth, my own role model of truly cool:

Elwy Yost.

Completely un-selfconscious (at least on any scale by which you could measure the self-consciousness of the hordes who claim the title of coolness), joyous in his chosen arena, well versed in it (but not so he could show off, only so he could enjoy and share), posessing of a kicking name, successful by his own measure, with his own satisfaction in his own style, Elwy Yost is to my mind, unimpeachably cool.

Somebody tell him.