Want to disappear.

Well played, Jack White--well played.

I'm sure that in this moment Jack was simply expressing his frustration at the lack of rapport he felt with his audience, their lack of participation in the sweat and fury and fire he injects into every performance, but since I specialize in focusing on the moment, this one speaks to me of a larger issue I keep running up against.

Just when did it become the last word in social stances to be utterly unwilling to admit to any strong emotion, display anything other than a cool and detached disdain in all circumstances, or allow oneself to indulge in expressing enjoyment in front of (shock, horror) other people? For the hipster, the dismissive sneer and the blank stare are de rigeur. They coordinate beautifully with the Ikea nesting tables and sideboard, assembly instructions and unwavering apathy included.

I realize that I'm out of the loop. I realize that I am, in fact, terminally unhip. And this isn't an attempt to hark back to a less jaded, simpler time. It was always the mark of high culture and good breeding to cultivate the attitude of the hipster. As goes the self-appointed upper echelons of the trendsetters, those who define what nucleus of cool the hangers-on should cluster around, so goes the vegan dude in the drainpipe jeans and strategically unkempt hair at the 7-11.

In 1958 Jack Kerouac was invited to a symposium at Hunter College to debate the question "Is There a Beat Generation?". He was under the impression that he was there to read his poetry, and he was wrong. Instead he was asked to participate in poetry's dissection, to display himself for the bloodless academics, professors of anthropology and sociology, Village Voice reporters eager to bury the corpse and attend the birthing of the next literary happening. I can imagine Jack climbing that stage, a little the worse for drink, Jack who did nothing but feel a little too much for his own good and express that surge of feeling his whole life, I can see him sitting there with a glass of brandy, looking into the face of that sniffy disdain, wondering why.

Jack said,"And now there are two types of beat hipsters: the Cool, bearded, sitting without moving in cafes with their unfriendly girls dressed in black, who say nothing; and the Hot, crazy, talkative, mad shining eyes, running from bar to bar only to be ignored by the cool subterraneans. I guess I'm still with the hot ones. When I walk into a club playing jazz, I still want to shout." He also said, "You came here prepared to attack me."

We can be sure that this dichotomy between the hot and the cool has always existed, and the cool always looks to temper the hot, quenching it in the bath of the ironic gaze, not allowing it to bend into a new shape or send off such uncontrollable sparks. Jack must have known how apt the tag of "subterraneans" was--burying all that is spontaneous inside themselves, nothing freely given, and nothing transformative taken away. A few years before, in On the Road, he'd written, "You don't die enough to cry." Who decided that erasing all but the surface of this life is better than that death?

Two Jacks, wondering where everybody went.