In which I live journal about how things used to be.
I have this aching feeling, a yearning inside that I can’t quite itch no matter how I try. I know they keep telling me that the older you get, the more you long for the past. Is it because the present is so bleak? Maybe so. I’ve watched as my friends and I have gone through financial ruin, job losses, lack of inspiration, broken relationships and a feeling of malaise. I don’t know what specifically it stems from, but I’m keenly aware of a general sense of confusion among the people with whom I interact.
All our modern technology is supposed to provide an outlet for personal progress. As such, I am an active part of all these social networks — Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Tumblr — yet I feel more alone than at any time in my adult life. My relationships with people, both in the virtual world and in my waking life, strike me as being at once tethered and, also, disconnected, a sort of unspoken seething in every corner. I’m friendly and funny and, at times, biting with my wit. When people stare at me blankly or treat me with no respect, I start to wonder: is it me? Did I do something to bring it on?
I recently (as music bloggers do occasionally) made friends with a young musician who grew up with all the modern conveniences — cell phones, HDTV, computers, internet — and I quickly became enraged with the things he would do when we were talking or hanging out. If we watched a movie, he would be texting during the movie. If he wasn’t texting, he was interrupting me with questions every few minutes. Sometimes, he would flatly ignore the movie or the conversation and just take a phone call that lasted several minutes.
When I complained, he would say, “Oh, it’s just because you’re not used to it. See, I grew up with all this stuff, so to me it’s normal.”
At that point, I wondered to myself, “Is this what modern convenience has done? Is it turning a generation of kids into people who understand less than half of everything?”
Of course, that was probably an isolated incident of someone who simply didn’t have any manners. Plenty of people who own appliances also have manners. To be fair, when I first discovered all of those devices, I’m sure I did the same things (and perhaps still do, though my awareness is much more pronounced today).
So what was it about the past that was dogging me? The idea of growing up and having only a land line in the house to take calls? The freedom of being able to physically do more by virtue of the fact that I could go through life without people needing to communicate with me every five minutes? Maybe I did grow up in a simpler time, but perhaps it’s more that my generation grew up interested in simpler things.
In the past couple of months, I’ve found myself taking prurient interest in things I haven’t in many years. I started breaking out old disco and funk records digging for breaks. I’ve been going roller skating. I’ve been watching movies from my childhood, in particular The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. This is really only a cross-section of the events that led me to write this post.
It’s easy to write this series of events off as a mid-life crisis, but it doesn’t bear the lightness and frivolity of a crisis at all, it’s become much more urgent than that in my own mind. I dream at night of these adventures where I’m in another city doing fascinating things. When I wake up, I stay glued to the computer seeking refuge from the world outside.
In my conversations with others, I’m almost always talking about something outside of the current sphere of influences. The interesting part is that in spite of how out-of-touch I might sound to someone who hasn’t been around much, I’ve actually found a kinship in my nerdiness with a lot of younger people who, like me, often ascribe their views to the culture of pre-technology boom.
What is it about the world of the present that makes us want to pretend we are not in it?
