The Birth of the Uncool part 2

When I say we'll be cool, I think that you know what I mean
There are only two letters difference between "uncool" and "cool" so a lot of explaining what uncool is will involve explaining what cool is.

So, let's turn to one of the first cool songs, Bye Bye Blackbird.

My mother taught me this song (and I will always love it because she loved it). There is a rarely sung verse and an even rarer second verse. The part most of us know is the chorus which is usually sung alone. When Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald started singing standards in the early 1950s, one of their innovations was to reintroduce the verses to 1920s songs. In the 1930s, these had been left off as music was streamlined. Although many of the verses were reintroduced after Frank and Ella started the process, it wasn't done with this song. No one wanted to know any more than that enigmatic chorus.

What exactly this chorus means is a matter of much speculation (and the verses don't help just in case you were wondering). In any case, I think that is missing the point. The song was deliberately written to be ambiguous and, as such, it had a  huge influence on coolness.  Here is what I mean going through line by line.

Pack up all my cares and woes, here I go singing low

What cares? Which woes? Who is the person singing this song and what exactly is bothering them? To put this song into a book musical, that is to give the character singing it some backstory, would ruin it. It is the vagueness that makes it.

Where somebody waits for me, sugar's sweet, so is she

And who is somebody? One of the "interpretations" of the song claims that the protagonist is a prostitute leaving the trade to go back to mother. And you can believe that if you want because there is nothing in the song to contradict the notion. There is nothing to support it either mind you.

No one here to love or understand me

But we have no idea where "here" is or who it is that might be here to not love or understand "me", who is also a complete mystery.

All the hard-luck stories they all hand me

Real chutzpah here. This whole song is a hard luck story and we're going to complain about other people's hard luck stories?

Make my bed, light the light, I'll arrive late tonight

And who is "me" addressing here. One of the reasons I find the prostitute-going-home story a little hard to credit is that it seems like the protagonist is addressing someone "here" and that they are saying they will be coming back "here" whenever they finish seeing the one who is sweet like sugar (which I think is more the way a man describes a lover than a woman her mother).

I've read someone who describes the song as a series of non sequiturs and that is a good way to put it. There is no logical flow from line to line. What makes it work as a song is that it is easily fitted into our personal musical. You know, the one you live. The one where you'd break into a song and dance number if you could only you don't have a hidden orchestra to back you up and you are worried people might laugh at you. The song is vague enough that your feeling of just wanting to get out and have a little fun and come home late because you're tired of all this fits in perfectly.

It's a childlike song, although not necessarily childish (it's hard not suspect that there is some "adultery' involved somewhere). It's a song that expresses wishes separated from responsibilities. A song to sing when we don't want to be reminded that we have a lot to be grateful for damnit! When we don't want to be reminded that others have it tough too, that groceries don't grow on trees and beds don't make themselves and that we are old enough to make our own decisions.

It presents a private world of the sort children's stories revel in. The secret garden behind the gate that no one else knows about. A place where I can run away and a sweet girl is waiting for me.

I think one of the telling things about the cool is the desire for exclusion. On the surface, Bye Bye Blackbird is about a desire to be included with someone who cares about me but that inclusion involves excluding everyone here who doesn't love or understand me. That's a recurring feature of the cool.

Take the Donovan song I was picking on yesterday and which I used for my title today. Look at the line in question:

"When I say we'll be cool I think that you know what I mean"

The converse—that others won't know what I mean—is just as important as your knowing. The inclusion is a function of the exclusion. This sort of music appeals to people who feel excluded and are hurt by that. The solution is to be excluded together.

It's a funny thing about these songs that they were always simultaneously about and not about sex and/or drugs. When two or three talked about them in private, they were about sex or drugs. When there was any sense that anyone else was listening they were about anything but sex or drugs and how stupid and uncool of you to think so.

The cool is a little girl playing with adult stuff like sex and drugs and who cares more about Daddy not getting it than about being consistent about what she means or wants.

The uncool is about being Daddy with all that comes with that including having to deal with a lot of grown up children who want to be cool.