I have a piece all planned for my Substack series, Making Sense of the Chaos. It’s about how many people, including me, remember a time when we felt all warm and fuzzy about the Left. For me, that was a long time ago. For others, they still have such a feeling. In that piece, which I probable will write sooner or later, I make the point that Wokeness has put an end to the warm, fuzzy Left. Today, however, I don’t want to write that piece. I’m tired of writing about Wokeness. I want to write about something else.
As I’m sitting there wondering what I could write about, if I even do write about anything (not Wokeness), I’m listening to Thelonius Monk playing Ruby, My Dear on my HomePod, and thinking about what a great song and performance it is. I recognized the title and the fact that Thelonius Monk was playing it because of his very particular and very recognizable style.
And then, I started thinking maybe I could write about the song, and about Mr. Monk. I’m not a music critic or jazz writer, but given the fact that one need not wallow in ignorance any more, what with internet searches and artificial intelligence, I thought that I could look some stuff up, and then write about what I thought was worth writing about, but certainly not Wokeness, because I’m (temporarily) tired of writing about Wokeness.
So, here goes. (Pause, while I look stuff up.)
—
So, it seems that Thelonius had an older sister named Marion, who had a friend named Rubie Richardson, who was the Ruby in the song that Monk wrote. Some websites call Rubie Monk’s first love, and there is a biography out there, but I want to finish writing this story today, so no time to get a biography. If you are reading this story, that means I have published it, but right now I’m thinking that it might be too boring to publish.
Back in the 1950’s I remember hearing about Thelonius Monk and how he was the cutting edge of cool, and wondering how he got that name Thelonius. I think I’m going to ask the Perplexity AI and see what she comes up with.
Another pause, while I look up, How did Thelonius Monk get his name Thelonius?
—
Perplexity tells me that Thelonious was actually the name of the jazz genius’ grandfather. A variety of “baby name” websites tell me a variety of origins of the name: a German or Dutch name meaning one who tills the soil, or a Greek or Latin name meaning someone special. My own tentative conclusion is the someone in Thelonious’ family did to a name what Thelonious himself was capable of doing to a song: creating something new, exciting, memorable, and uplifting.
I notice that I misspelled Mr. Monk’s forename at the beginning of this Substack piece: I left out the “o” in the last syllable. I decided not to go back and correct it. An “-ous”ending of a English word, like “fabulous” or “monstrous” indicates an adjective, where in Latin “-us” without the “o” is just a masculine word ending.
As I’m writing this, my HomePod is playing Self-Portrait in Three Colors by Charles Mingus. I hadn’t asked Siri to play jazz on my HomePod. I’d just asked her to play something I like.
So where am I with this Substack piece which is not about Wokeness, and not really about music, nor about Thelonious Monk, nor Dutch or German or Latin names?
So what is it about?
It’s about exploration. That’s what Thelonious Monk did with pianos. He explored what could be done with them, and he found something entirely new which nobody else did with pianos, not Chopin, not Rachmaninoff, not Victor Borge (remember him? You probably don’t.)
So, is exploration a good thing? In my never-humble opinion, it is. A very good thing.
You don’t have to be human to explore. Birds do it, bees do it. But when birds and bees do it, and other non-human animals, they are looking for food, nesting sites, and other creature comforts. When humans go exploring they are often looking for something cool. That’s what Miles Davis, yes another jazz genius sought and found in his album, Birth of the Cool. In this context, of course the word cool doesn’t mean a temperature between warm and cold. It means something else, something, well, much cooler.
What do dictionaries say about this use of the word cool? Another pause.
—
Mssrs. Merriam and Webster’s definition is disappointing:
They call it “informal” and define it as very good or excellent or hip. But Thelonious Monk’s work is more than that.
Okay. Straight ahead to the Urban Dictionary. Pause.
—
There are many definitions, but I have picked one that I like:
Cool is the best of the best. It is timeless, a classic descriptive word that has never and will never go out of style.
What have I learned from all of this?
For human beings, when they go exploring, they might be searching for many things, but the best of the best that they might be searching for is something cool. When Christopher Columbus went sailing with his three ships, was he looking for something cool? I don’t know, but what he found was cool: the New World.
For me, there’s a take-home lesson. From time to time, just like right now, I get tired of writing about Wokeness. What I do want to write about is something cool. I suppose I could say that Wokeness is something totally uncool, but if I did say that then I would be writing about Wokeness, which is something that I don’t want to do.
Shall I delete that last paragraph? I could, but maybe I won’t.
Shall I delete or save to the Cloud this whole Substack piece, because it is not cool enough to publish? Let’s leave it this way:
If you are reading this, it’s because I thought it was cool enough to publish. Feel free to disagree or not read it. Maybe it wasn’t.
Mocking wokeness is funny, until you realize that people actually believe it (and it has already wrecked the entertainment world).