The First Cool Person I Ever Met

I’ve tried this conversation out on my friends and enemies a couple times now and it always falls flat. But of course, I blame them, not the conversation itself. Maybe I just divide the world up differently than them; I feel like finding out about the existence of actual cool people in your real, non-media consumption life was a very important part of my development as a human being. I grew up in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It’s a town of 8,000, the center of the economy is a mercilessly preppy college that my dad taught at called Williams College. It’s super famous but not everyone has heard of it. It wasn’t a place where you were supposed to be at if you were cool. If you were cool and you grew in Williamstown, especially back then, you moved somewhere: Northampton, NYC, Boston, Pittsfield if you must. But you didn’t stay around there. I grew up with parents who had cool tendencies but by the time they’d popped two kids out, gave up smoking pot cause they couldn’t find a dealer in Massachusetts and started hanging out with the other professors from the Economics department they’d washed a lot of that cool person dust off. So, through their record collection, through MTV, through magazines I got the sense that there was a cool world somewhere far away from my world. In my world there was just kids and parents. Neither group is cool in the way that unimpeachably cool people I saw on my TV were. And this wasn’t necessarily because the people on my TV were famous, this was sort of a guilt by geographic association: if you were hanging out in Berkshire County, Massachusetts in the very early ‘90s you were definitionally not cool. . .if you were cool you would leave.

But at some point, you’re going to meet a person in real life who is cool the way people on the TV are, doing something cool with their life, living their life in a slightly unconventional way, and the first one I saw had a huge impact on me, even though I did not realize it it at the time. It was the town photographer from the local paper, the North Adams Transcript. Her name is Gillian Jones, I just found her online. Go take a look at her and read her bio, she is still cool and she looks cool.

I never knew Gillian’s name until fifteen seconds ago when I searched for her online. But when you grow up in a small town before the internet some lady from the paper would come take your photo maybe once every two years for some reason or another. I think Gillian first took my picture when my second grade class planted a tree in front of our school. She came and took the picture of our swim team when I was in middle school. And every time I saw her I knew she was cool in ways that my parents absolutely were not. She wore a scarf when it was warm out. She kept her scarf on while she was taking a picture of the YMCA swim team inside our hot ass pool area. IT WAS A DECORATIVE SCARF. It was a fashion scarf. She had fashion things. Brown hair, zero hairspray, which was a statement in the Berkshires in the early 90s. I think just a simple ponytail while she was taking pictures. She had a cool bag for her camera. It was canvas. She wore long, loose dresses that went to her ankles. And more significant than any of that in my opinion. . .it looked like she cared immensely about the quality of her work. I remember her valiantly trying to rearrange Mrs. Sullivan’s second grade class around this little sapling to try to actually show all the kid’s faces and show the tree. She had an assignment and she delivered. She was the town photographer. It was noble work. She did it well, she did it with pride and she was fucking cool. Now reading her biography I feel like I see it all, born in ‘69 in Queens, grew up in Long Island until moving with her parents to Berkshire County in 1982. Probably wasn’t too psyched about coming to Berkshire County in her middle school years. . .duking it out with O’Bannion Dazed and Confused types while graduating from Mount Greylock in the mid 80s. I’m guessing she wasn’t an out and out supporter of the move. . .but she found something. And really just a handful of years later, she’s running around the county with one of three cool jobs into the entire 413 area code.

Gillian, when I was a young boy, just trying to figure out what it was to be cool and how far away I’d have to move away to be cool.

I saw you and I saw a window into a life filled with clove cigarettes, jazz records, films with subtitles, long instrumental breaks before obtuse lyrics, travel by train, arguments about divinity, un-bankable college majors, backstages, skinny dipping, girlfriends who can roll a joint while driving a car, brunches, people crashing on couches, idiosyncratic tattoos, patchouli incense, jewelry that told a story, red wine at a gallery opening, herbal tea, zines, cyphers with amazing rappers, road trips to see bands you’ve never heard of, records that sell 4,000 copies but everyone in your world knows about them. I looked hard for that window Gillian because my life was full of people who didn’t seem to love art, who loved Snapple and mountain bikes, who loved dipping tobacco, making varsity. and making fun of me. I needed that window and your spirit, your energy, your scarf, your asking me to move slightly to the left so you could get the picture just right. . .you were the window to where I wanted to be and I can say I got there cause I saw you. I live in a cool city. I’m one of the cool motherfuckers in this city. I play in an amazing band, I’m the music director and afternoon host on a jazz radio station. I’ve played on all sorts of great stages. My friends are even more amazing. I love the cool world I live in. Gillian, I found the life I wanted and the first time I saw it was when you took my picture.