Zevon begins by giving me a lecture about the origins of hipsterdome:
You need points of reference and inspiration. Hipsterdome
isn't entered through mimicry; it's entered through tasteful remixing. For
starters, you might want to explore the aesthetic and mental space that exists
between Oscar Levant and Gene Kelly as they appeared in the fevered 1951
musical An American In Paris. See Levant
there, a little gangly and serious. His mouth can't conceal something brooding
in him, despite his brilliance at the piano. Kelly, tap shoes on, is all effortless ebullience here, pure old America distilled and dandified while he
sings and dances. Kelly's free to be fey, and free to use rich women to his
advantage, and free to paint mediocre Paris street scenes, and free to sing
with the little French children. Levant is free to dream of symphonies, dark solipsistic reveries emanating from his frenetic fingers:
The point is, America is the new Europe. A good place to get some hipster inspiration is through a Technicolor depiction of a time when Europe was the new Europe and Paris the perennial hipster shining star. You will find the seeds to your hipster self somewhere between Levant's dark talents and Kelly's nimble, naive purity. I'll leave it to you to fill in the details. I trust you will find a way to move closer to the dome.
I've tried to absorb the
history lesson. France was the hipster Mecca and now, apparently, it's America.
Or as Zevon puts it, "America is the new Europe." In other words, our
new President Barack Obama is more hip and more European than any European ever
was and that makes us, as Americans, the coolest people in the world and yet
we’re known to hate the whole hipster French thing. It's all so confusing and
now I feel more lost and befuddled than ever.
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