What is Hip...

 I read a book. That's what you are supposed to do in summer when you go to the beach. I have not been to the beach yet this summer but when I go I'll probably spend my time fishing in the surf, throwing a cast net for bait or simply sitting in a lawn chair imaging old Spaniards washing ashore with Texas beach sand chafing in their underwear. I guess I mean to say I won't be reading at that time so I better do it now. 

The book I read was "Hip: The History" by John Leland. Published in 2004 it's a case of better read than never. I flinched it out of a son in law's bookcase. In fact as I check around the house I may need a box to return the books I have borrowed. I might even throw in a few extras but I'll chose carefully because I have recently discovered that my recall is very poor of anything read greater than a decade ago. I know I read it because I own it. Previously read books can be a new joy to my aging brain. 

Satchmo was once asked "what is jazz?" He replied if you have to ask, you'll never know. Hip is like that. The word hip comes from a word used by the Wolof, a west African ethnic group "hepi" meaning to see, or to open one's eyes and is a term of enlightenment. Other hip words from the Wolof are "dega" which evolves to dig, to understand and "jev" or jive meaning to talk falsely. These words found their way to America by the 1700s. Hip travels. It binds cultures together. 

So who is hip? Hip is writers, the old gods of Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, Twain, Whitman as well as the beat writers of Kerouac and Ginsberg. It's musicians and music, Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, bebop and rappers like Jay-Z, punk rock and riot Grrrls. It's Bugs Bunny and any number of tricksters and in modern times it's the computer geeks. 

The thing about hip is that once it gets outside it's original small circle it may not be hip anymore. The great production machine that's America spews such a steady stream of merchandise to be consumed that sometimes hip is used to sell because they have run out of all the other ways.

Hip is the story of America, according to Leland, "the arc of ideas as they move from subterranean Bohemia to Madison Avenue and back again." There are so many threads to this book to think about I could sit down and read it again. I though the author explored the topic so well I bought another book of his, "Happiness is a Choice You Make: a year among the oldest of the old."

Leland was interviewed and asked who was hippest. His reply was Jack Kerouac and Miles Davis. Deeply flawed men but very hip.  

If I don't read a book at the beach this summer that's probably going to be hip. You on the other hand are probably not hip. Dig?