In the past week and a half two people everyone should have at least great respect- if not admiration bordering on fanaticism- for passed on. I'm talking, of course, about Kurt Vonnegut and Sol LeWitt. Without bothering to eulogize when so many more eloquent folks have done so (here and here), EMERGE has reflected on that peculiar place the deaths of your idols leaves you. There was a taste back in December when Mr. Dynamite passed away, but the Vonnegut and LeWitt dying just days apart feels like such a tremendous blow to American creativity. And this got EMERGE thinking not just of the individuals but the tv shows, record labels, magazines, clubs, and shops that- like those hugely talented men- helped form this blog's sensibility.

While the list is terribly long of icons dead and gone, not to mention great spots paved over by gentrification, what this little mental exercise led to was an old copy of How To Be Fashionable Or Consume Like Me by Andrew Coulter Enright which you can download as a PDF here.

The book/zine was quite the phenomenon when Enright published it and wildposted pages all over Williamsburg to advertise. And with the benefit of retrospection it's easy to understand why. How To Be Fashionable captured the zeitgeist of a peculiar moment culturally: post-9/11, mash-ups, electroclash, Total Information Awareness, filesharing and so forth. In addition to advice like "Eat Edamame," Enright's tome lays out detailed lists of the brands to wear, the post-structuralist thinkers to know, and artists of all stripes to appreciate in your quest for hipster status. While so much is completely still applicable, particularly the line "Everything is about context and sex appeal", much feels comically five minutes ago. Many of the must-read magazines are long gone, there isn't a mention of myspace or any blogs in the text and the idea that "the fin is the new mullet" dates the whole thing immediately.

So here's the punchline: Working in "leading edge culture" and trends, EMERGE is surrounded by hundreds of would-be next big things, from ideas to talents to movements and so forth, and within just a couple years, so much of this stuff will be cultural detritus and some will be legends in the making. Parsing the good from the bad isn't an exact science, but one thing that helps separate the wheat from the chaff is vision, something Vonnegut, LeWitt- and Enright- had in spades and the rest of us can only hope to emulate. So the next time somebody tells you how huge new rave is going to be, or how the whole world will be wearing neon lederhosen next season take a moment to reflect on that ineluctable quality the true greats have and the rest strive to achieve. whatever it is.

Rest In Peace

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