There are few times in your adult life — maybe three times after your thirty and you might get one more in your forties — that you get to feel ‘cool’.
I don’t mean the big ‘cool’ that you get to keep; the winning touchdown, the pushing someone out of the street right before the bus whizzes by, the snappy remark that wins the argument but also turns the crowd in your favor. And I don’t mean the forced cool, the notice me, the yeah, I just did that, kind.
Nope.
Cool, when it’s real, is a much deeper thing. It’s what you get when you don’t deserve it, but the people that are around you are so very cool, that before you know it, it’s all around your shoulders like a blanket. And you can’t believe how warm you are.
And this is the real ‘cool’. Not a condition, but an action. Not people that are necessarily cool, but people that act cool to each other and to you.
We are in Binghamton, New York and Binghamton has made me feel cool.
This area is the place that used to be home and now just where all the memories are stored — which isn’t a bad thing — but a small group of people that I have spent the last day with, are very cool people.
We are here doing two things. We are pre-launching the new book THE INVENTION OF EVERYTHING: Insights on Life, Food, and one good Thermos. And since the book has ties to Binghamton we have expanded that to making the book tour the frame for a documentary about the arts scene in the area entitled BINGHAMTON: Valley of Creativity. That we will be premiering at The Broome County Arts Council in February.
Which is amazing.
And we put together a team. Two videographers, a still photographer, a drone pilot along with my publisher and myself, to film all we need in two days and then go back and turn it all into a film to premiere in Binghamton in February.
And yes, I spent five hours yesterday on-set getting to interview, one-on-one, some of the most talented and gifted people I have ever met. And I could ask them anything and it was open and real and true.
Yup.
And that was cool.
But there was also having to shoot the same scene three hundred and eleven times in front of Mather Street, to get the ‘Walking tour of Cecils’ part just right — that wasn’t so cool. But the coolness that came later at the book signing at The Belmar, was worth waiting for.
These people, these videographers — kids really, the age of my own kids — who had only known each other for minutes before I got to the first shoot — gelled like they had grown up together. This still photographer — a vibrant, confident, energetic young woman who seemed like she had been born with a camera in her hand — took her place like she had always been there.
In minutes, five strangers became a team.
Then the coolness came. When Jen at the The Belmar brought me a hamburger, guessing how I would like it and brought it over to the book table. When Emily fussed with the sleeves of my jacket then brought me her favorite beer because she ‘knew’ I would like it. When Will grabbed boxes of books and placed them out on a table, even though that wasn’t his job and wasn’t asked to do so. When Charles joked and laughed and then became a phantom and got shots when I never knew he was there. When Ed, the owner of The Belmar, refused to take our money for food. When Connie, who was rushing to meet her new grandchild on a different coast, spent days on the phone, organizing not only the best of Binghamton to interview but a place for us to shoot. When Tara, the most camera-shy person I have ever met, agreed to be interviewed and traveled from New Jersey just to support one of her authors. When my old friend Tejay who interviewed me on his radio station that morning, hugged me and told me that he was proud of me.
That was very, very cool.
Today is day two. Tara, the publisher and I will meet our team this morning for another busy day. It will be productive. It will be fun. But I’m already watching the clock and knowing it will soon end.
We will all go our separate ways.
And I will remember how cool these people made me feel.