Subject: RE: BS: Star Trek Captain before Kirk
From:
Azizi
Date: 05 Mar 06 - 05:01 PM
After reading Little Hawk's comments about emptiness, the African concept of "coolness" came to my mind. I've tried to find an Internet article about this concept, but have had no success yet. I'm sure there must be cyberspace articles about this. I'm probably putting in the wrong key words...
But here are two excerpts from the article "Stripping The Emperor: The Africanist Presence In American Concert Dance" by Brenda Dixon Gottschild [page 93 & page 96 in Shiela Walker, editor "African Roots/American Cultures; Africa In The Creation In The Americas {Rowman & Littlefield,2001}. Although this article is speaking about dance, {as indicated in the article}, the concept of "cool" is all-embracing.
"In a broad sense, the Aficanist aethetic can be termed an asthetic of contrariety, while the European perspective seks to remove conflict through efficient problem solving. The Africanist asethetic embraces difference and dissonance, rahter than erasing or resolving it. Contrariety is expressed in African dilemma stories that pose a question rather than offer a solution; in music or vocal work that sounds cacophonous or gratting to the untrained ear; and in a dance that seems unsophisticated to eyes trained in a different aesthetic. ..."Enbracing the conflict" is embedded in the "aesthetic of cool" in which "coolness" results from the juxtaposition of detachment and intensity. Those opposites would be difficult to fuse in European academic aesthetics. But there is room for their pairing in Africanist aesthetics"...
...the "aesthtics of cool" is all-embracing. It is an attitude {in the sense that African Americans use the word "attitude"} that combines composure with visability...It is seen in the asymmetrical walk of African American males, which shows an attitude of carelessness cultivated with calculated asethetic clarity. It is in the unemotional, detached, mask-like face of the drummer or dance whose body and energy may be working fast, hard, and hot, but whose face remains cool.
The aloofness, sangfroid, and detachment of some styles of European academic dance are completely different from this aesthetic of the cool. The European attitude suggests centeredness, control, linearity, directness; the Africanist mode suggests asymmeticality {that plays off the center}, looseness {implying slexibility and citality}, and indirectness of approach. "Hot", it's opposite, is a necessary component of the Africanist concept of "cool". It is the embracint of these opposites, and in their high-affect juxtposition, that the aesthetic of the cool exists."
end of quote.
It just occurs to me why I like the Star Trek character of Spock-
it seems that he has mastered the art {skill} of being "unemotional, detached". While his "body and energy [is] working fast, hard, and hot, [his] face remains cool."
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sj
