LONG TIME, KNOW, SEE….
[To] someone with a longer perspective, someone looking at us, we’d look like a bunch of ants on a log, running around. And every hundred years, it’s like somebody flushes the toilet and the entire planet is changed. –Woody Allen
I have lived, not a hundred years, but almost as long as the 78 year old Woody Allen — long enough to appreciate where he’s coming from. It’s a different world from the one I grew up in the years preceding, during and after World War II, with a culture so completely changed that if I’d fallen asleep in that generation and awakened in this one, I might think that either I or the world had lost its marbles. Indeed, it’s like somebody flushed the toilet, and the marble in space we call earth became a different planet.
Now, I’m nostalgic about a lot of things, but I’m not one of those antedeluvians with rose-colored glasses about the past. There have been changes for the better and for the worse, and as much as I mourn the loss of what was (or seemed) wonderful then, it wasn’t all wonderful by a long shot. Those who “want their America back” want an America that never was whole or without shortcomings.
I would love to get that America back where drugs were a relative anomaly.
I would hate to get that America back where racism was as normal as everyday life.
I would love to get that America back where mean-spirited discourse wasn’t fuckin’ de rigueur (if you’ll pardon my French).
I would hate to get that America back where censorship trumped artistic freedom.
I would love to get that America back where the good things in life were more intrinsic than superficial.
I would hate to get that America back where the likes of McCarthyism fanned jingoist fears and ruined careers.
I would love to get that America back where popular music knew the meaning of sophisticaton.
I would hate to get that America back where the average lifespan for men in the year I was born was 56 1/2 years. By all rights, if I’d fallen asleep in that generation, I should’ve died before I woke up in the present generation. Talk about exceptionalism! Is this a great country, or what?
arekhill1 4:52 pm on May 16, 2014 Permalink |
I fucked de Riguer. I believe her first name was Simone
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mistermuse 10:07 pm on May 16, 2014 Permalink |
I think I knew her sister, Catherine de Neuve Riguer. She ended up marrying some guy named Mortis.
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Don Frankel 2:23 pm on May 17, 2014 Permalink |
Good points Muse. It’s good to remember your life and times fondly. It’s foolish to think it was all good and there was nothing wrong back then.
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mistermuse 4:36 pm on May 17, 2014 Permalink |
Right, Don, although there are always some things in one’s life one doesn’t remember fondly. Anyone who claims not to have any regrets is either an ignoramus or in denial, it seems to me.
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