DURING THE WINTER of my sophomore year in high school, a fistfight broke out in the cafeteria. It wasn’t anybody I knew especially well, and it didn’t get very far, but it marked a day in my life I’ll never forget.
Once the commotion started and the chant of “fight, fight, fight” rose up in the lunchroom, everybody stood to cheer and watch. I did too, craning my neck to try to see better, probably wearing a sophomoric smirk on my face. It felt to me as if the whole world had gotten to its feet.
Everybody except one person. I only noticed when it was over and all of us turned to sit back down. My friend JJ hadn’t budged. Judging by the fact that his sandwich was almost gone, he hadn’t even let the matter affect his lunch. He didn’t ask any questions about the fight—not who was involved, not whether there was blood, not who won—he just bit into his apple.
The rest of us tittered on about the whole thing. Who we were rooting for, whether it would continue at the park after school, blah blah blah. JJ just stared off into space.
Finally, the contrast felt too much for me, and I said, “Hey JJ, why didn’t you get up?”
“I don’t like fights,” he responded. Then he looked me straight in the eye and said, “You don’t like fights either.”
He was right. JJ and I had been friends for a long time and had talked often about our dim view of high school fights.
Small as it might seem, I couldn’t get the matter out of my head. Why had JJ stayed seated while I stood up?
It’s a question that leads me to a great scene in the film Almost Famous, the scene where the legendary rock journalist Lester Bangs (played by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman) offers advice to a young writer just starting out. Bangs is mad about the direction rock and roll is going, and he blames rock journalists. They go to parties, they hang out with “girls,” they become friends with the musicians. Pretty soon they’re writing “sanctimonious stories about the genius of rock stars.” This not only corrupts the moral core of the writers, it threatens to ruin the music. Lester Bangs doesn’t even try to hide his disgust as he describes it—rock and roll is in danger of becoming just another “industry of cool.” It will no longer be real. It will no longer be authentic. It will reach only for the lowest rung on the ladder: your high school classmate’s idea of cool.
I think a lot of problems in this world stem from people lacking the courage to follow their moral core and instead following their high school classmate’s idea of cool.
The veteran Lester Bangs has built a life around his moral core, namely, a particular vision of rock and roll. Bangs gives the young writer some advice: Keep your distance from the band and the parties and the “girls.” Focus on what really matters—the music—and be honest and unmerciful about it. Finally, he drops this gem: “The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool.”
I wish I’d gotten that advice in high school. I wouldn’t have stood up for that stupid fight. I would have stayed in my seat with JJ, the two of us taking pride in an act of supreme uncoolness.
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