End of An Age

It’s far-flung 2024 – a sci-fi date Stanley Kubrick couldn’t be bothered to foresee. Paul McCartney, who once upon a time jumped for joy in slow motion alongside his teen bandmates, now dresses in layers and is photographed somberly walking around with a grizzled gray jaw – the proper end of an era whose curtain is yet unwilling to fall. One epoch draws to a close and another begins, a delineation most keenly felt in the popular culture. David Crosby is gone. David Jones – who’d had to change his name to David Bowie to avoid being confused with Davy Jones of the Monkees – is gone, as is the diminutive troublemaker who’d made him change his name. James Garner is gone, Robert Preston, too. Kirk Douglas. Tony Bennett. Stop the presses.

As for the interior life? Exterior evidence suggests it is also on its way out, an artifact of the departing age. Daydreaming – staring at the empty air – has gone the way of the locked diary. The last time I saw someone just sitting and staring, deep in thought, SpaghettiOs^® were still considered food and were being dumped onto plates and served at table. At one juncture in human history, a woman waiting for a film to begin in the communal twilight of a movie theater might be looking intently ahead of her, as if at an object hovering before her in the air. An onlooker in another row might surreptitiously follow the woman’s gaze to spot what she is studying with such ferocity. But the woman isn’t looking at anything. She is deep “in thought.” Similarly, someone waiting for a bus might be soft-focused on a copse of trees several blocks away; not looking at the trees, but pondering. 

Interiority is leaving the world. A shared exteriority has replaced it. Connectivity began as a means and is now an end. Someone sitting on a park bench lost in thought now presents as vaguely troubled. 

Eydie Gormé Seems as Distant as the Napoleonic Wars

Eydie Gormé seems as distant as the Napoleonic Wars. I wonder how I can be so far away from things familiar. All the names and faces and things that were common currency just yesterday – I don’t think they are in the present universe at this time. Where is the world that was littered with all that glory? It’s an ancient hue and cry. Every generation hollers their confusion at the arrival of the next incomprehensible chapter. Where are the people leaning against buildings and staring into their own thoughts? Are there thoughts anymore, or only posts? We’re still surrounded by everything. Look around the sound stage. Never mind your friend’s photo of lunch. Look at all the flaming archangelic stuff, ringing with the music of the spheres; the Battle of Thermopylae, Debbie Reynolds singing Tammy, Groucho, Neil Armstrong flubbing his line and hopping like a bunny, da Vinci, Peter Gabriel, Judy Garland hunched in form-fitting black, spotlit, cropped hair throwing sweat as she reaches for the note, inoperable cancers, the middle east, the far east, Clint Eastwood in Two Mules for Sister Sara, Sam Peckinpah, the last afternoon of the last Neanderthal, Thomas McGuane, the Fall of Rome, the Cambrian Explosion, Johnny Mercer, the Impact Event, Harold Lloyd, Sartre, Ava Gardner, Saul Bellow, Marlene Dietrich, Édith Piaf, Anthony Newley, Bob Mould, Neil Aspinall, Maurice Chevalier, Stu Sutcliffe. Henry Mancini! The world is huge and roiling and doesn’t pause. Imagine what you will – expansive fields of waving grasses and strangers walking there, absolutely unaware of you, people sitting down to eat all over the world, children pushing toys under beds, then naked children sprinting down sun-dappled forest paths; Hawk faced George Gershwin massaging a Steinway and glancing coyly over his shoulder – the grand, straight unbrowed nose, the slight underbite. Enola Gay, Gary Cooper, Fred Astaire, Nouakchott and Wilmington kissing in the night, Henry Fonda, the Mariana Trench, Steve McQueen, Dana Andrews. Jimmy Stewart collapsing atop a paper-strewn table and sliding to the floor. Noel Coward, Glen Matlock, Isaac Newton, Andy Partridge, the Magna Carta, the first bird, the first fish, Gene Kelly, the hasty burial of Pompeii, Dodge City, Verdun, Cary Grant walking off into a snow-filled evening, Caligula, Captain Kangaroo, Franco Nero as Lance (“Live! LIVE!”), Dresden on fire, Vonnegut in his olive drabs there, Gene Kelly again, Nelson Mandela. And a distinguished pack of tuxedoed figures standing around a brilliantly underlit emerald swimming pool in the dead of a desert night, pinching martini glasses and tossing heads back congenially, in laughter, free hands in pockets, backs arched, knees bent slightly – the orgasmic synchronous bomburst of everything happening everywhere, every second, even as our dear tormented rock pirouettes lazily through an eternally empty room. All we have is
each other.

I can see my parents sunken living room

I can see my parents sunken living room in Boulder, Colorado in the ‘70s. I can very clearly see myself stepping down into it. Red shag carpet, vaulted ceilings, exposed beams of dark wood, skylights, lots of macramé. And the Percy Faith Orchestra sawing away at what sounds like 11,000 violins, the Limelight Theme soaking the moment with gorgeous and indescribable melancholy. A memory can be like a physical blow to the chest. You know the one. 

Look up and out. Raise your face to the Magisterial Everyday and drink in what you see. Gather a cache of introspection over which to warm your hands in the coming years. It is yours alone. The repository – all that you love – resides in your head. May it fill to the brim.