Reflection on Seattle and what it means to be Cool.
So, I had the priviledge of spending a day with my family in Seattle, Washington. In South Africa there is a coffee franchise known as Seattle coffee company. I suppose it was named that because Seattle is known for its coffee amibg other things I will get to shortly. These coffee outlets in South Africa were linked to a popular book store. You could page through new books while sipping coffee, which to me is pretty much how I picture heaven’s foyer. I remember drinking my coffee there, reading and then staring lost in thought at the silhouette of the Seattle skyline on the logo of the coffee shop. This weekend, I got to see it for real!
Seattle is much like its skyline. Trendy, urban and über cool. That would be a theme I picked up in everything from Pikes Market to the dogs being walked on the streets (yes even they look cool). The downtown streets smells like coffee and pot , not coffee in a pot.
We got to visit this place called the museum of pop culture, which in it’s very name carries with it a cool paradox since a museum is usually associated with what has been rather than with what is trending like this one. I said to myself that if I as a pastor should also be a contextual and cultural exegete, I better pay attention. This place is supposed to show what humans adore and find worthwhile spending time and money on. It does just that.
The main exhibitions were: Tattoos, Minecraft, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Horror, Video Games and Sound. As an add on to the sound exhibit there are three rooms devoted to two pop groups and one pop music icon, all with Seattle roots (Nirvanna, Pearl Jam and Jimi Hendricks).
The exhibitions were all filled with cool and interesting stuff-too numerous to give each the attention it deserve here. I will therefore skip to my reflections on what all this taught me about humankind, my own.
Fantasy has to do with peoples dreams and aspirations for the here and now. Generally they are good ones and in fantasies, the good knight usually wins, find love and either kill or befriend the dragon. It taught me that human beings desire what is good and best for the world they live in.
Horror is what we experience when our worst fears become a reality. The horror genre then, is a way to prepare us by challenging us to be suck into all kinds of worst case scenarios. Human beings all fear something and they walk around with a few personal horror movies playing in their heads…even the ones that never watch horrors!
Science fiction has to do with the future. It takes new insights and breakthroughs of the present and multiply them imaginatively into either a good or a bad, but always an interesting scenario for the future. Who doesn’t wonder and speculate what kind of life technology and new insights will bring tomorrow?
Humans also like sound, especially musical ones and even more so ones accompanied by lyrics and moves that tell a story. This the sounds exhibition and the band stories showed me.
The minecraft and video section showed me just how much we also like to play and create. What makes minecraft such a popular game is the very fact that it gives people boundless options to creatively create what they feel like.
Tattoos are also interesting. I realize that people get all different kinds of tattoos for different reasons but if one have to choose a common theme “remembrance” would do. Tattoos mark things people do not want to forget and see as pivotal to their identities.
So humans dream, fear, project, sing, dance, play and create. Hardly things I wasn’t aware off but things I never thought about and saw together as a whole.
I could spot most of what I learned in the museum outside in Seattle except for three omissions I also became aware of. People love to eat but also to pray. Even in downtown Seattle you will find trendy church that look like coffee shops and big classes cathedrals with saints peering from its walls. And then thirdly and shockingly. Only in Hillbrow Johannesburg have I seen so many homeless. Ironically, in a city that only let’s live what is cool, homelessness flourishes. Seattle is indeed one if the worst hit cities when it comes to homeless people roaming its trendy streets everywhere. I saw a business that advertised “heated storage”. Somehow humankind thought it cool that some people are freezing outside while their summer convertibles enjoy heated storage.
Maybe because the cool guys who plan and man the pop museum didn’t notice how central worship is to humankind, they also became blind to the plight of the poor under their noses. Maybe if we embrace the fact that worship is central to our experience of being human , it will open eyes, hearts and hands towards the poor. That will be cooler than Seattle. Maybe this is what short not only in Seattle’s life, but also in my own.
I stared at that logo in coffee shop not realizing that I will one day get to see it live. Not knowing it was right inside of me, even then.
Gabriel J Snyman
February 17 2020