It's very easy to share cynicism. 

It seems to be hip, in this day and age, to sneer at anyone's protests to
innocence. We rejoyce in the downfall of homemaker Martha Stewart because
she's always been too good to be real. We want companies that make the
Internet easier for people to access to burn down, because it increases the
number of people that the hip crowd has to deal with. It's uncool to admit to
liking weepy movies, but it's easy to share movies that poke fun at
everything. It's uncool to like Titanic, cool to share Fight Club, because the
first has a Message about Love and the latter has a Message about How Screwed
Up Modern America Is. It's great to show the ending of American Beauty to your
friends, or to gasp at the final twist in Memento, or nod smugly at all the
jokes in Clerks. Yes, I've done it too. It's a great feeling, superiority,
knowing that now you, too, see something in the world, and isn't it a shame
but isn't it great to be able to see it.

But it's very hard to share hope.

It's hard to admit to liking weepy movies. To share novels about redemption in
the face of adversity. To say, "Listen to this song. It's pretty... it touched
me somewhere."

Phrases that espouse natural feelings of loss, of anguish, sound stupid in
Modern American. "My heart is full of sorrow." It sounds... weird, doesn't it?
And yet it might perfectly describe a feeling of loss, of grief.

Even in our new, grief-heightened, post-9-11 mindset, it's uncool to grieve
for too long. Cast thy nightly color off, America. You must know your father
lost a father, and that father lost also lost his. Songs about love still have
to be cute, or about sex. Songs about grief are okay, but keep the sets short,
we don't like ballads around these parts.

Well, I have a confession to make. I fell in love with David Campbell when he
sang 'I Honestly Love You' at the Alkazar a few years ago--straight piano and
one Aussie cabaret singer, tenor. I cried during Titanic the first time I
watched it, before the cynical shell came up and I watched it again. I like to
curl up in my chair and listen to Michael Ball belt out 'Love Changes
Everything'. I liked The Princess and the Warrior in all its slow camera-
panning and circling-around-the-characters glory. I believed that there was a
real edition of The Princess Bride. Hyperion, Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, and
Rise of Endymion all say something important about love and the universe. I
still cry when I listen to Eagles love songs. I belived in the love story
between Matt and Louisa, even though they were just playing off the audience's
cynicism. I believed in the happy ending in the first act of Into the Woods. I
nearly broke down when I read that Ann Landers died. And my favorite
Doonesbury strips are the two where Richard Davenport takes a picture of the
rare Bachman's Warbler... and dies, birds perching fearlessly on his camera.
Things that say something real about the beauty of the human condition.
Perserverance. Love. Beauty. Poetry. Magic.

But then, I never was cool.