It's funny, because I think I was in 5th grade when I first saw Dick Cavett's HBO series that reflected on all the events (this was the 80s and I remember thinking one day all that trivia will mean something to me). I vividly recall, however, the year that the show ended with Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes "Up Where We Belong" to highlight a montage of 1982 events. These were days when a cable wire and box came out of the t.v. and the only one that had it was in my dad's man-cave. Still, I have a detailed memory, age ten, that news mattered and nothing sits still.
Now, highlight the 90s when I finished high school and had my late teens and early twenties, especially London, 10 years later, when I came back from a life-changing experience and an entirely different worldview (nothing has been the same since). By then, cable was more a mainstay in our lives and the ubiquitousness of channels was a cultural norm. I remember my father used to bitch that I would watch MTV's Real World like a fanatic. I had to - it was like my living experience in London: a potpourri of strangers from multiple backgrounds all living together in a strange city. The zest of super-diversity had me hooked and when I came back to the U.S. I continued the pattern. I loved being in the company of people who were unlike me, individuals who had different perspectives, angles, life experiences and cultures.
Of course, Reality Bites came out a couple of years later spoiling the Real World for me, when I realized that everything in the U.S. tends to be made into a commercial. Real World got ridiculously oversexed and soap-opera-like and then Road Rules, a spin-off of the MTV pattern, soon did the same. I was getting older. The shenanigans of idiots in their 20s was no longer appealing. I was teaching and in a different world. The Real World was not the glitz of real life, but that of Hollywood. In other words, it grew stupid rather quickly.
When one is living encompassed in a cocoon of their own generation, they don't realize what is actually going on: 70s to 80s to 90s to Y2K (and the world didn't blow up). I started thinking about dial-up modems, answering machines, the oncoming of the Jerry Springer Show. The times changed quickly and we simply moved along with it. Michael Jackson's Thriller video. The nation paused to experience. Prince came along. Madonna.
I'm simply thinking that I was lucky to grow up at the time that I did, living off lessons of the other decades before me (with an appreciation for them, but not an understanding).
It wasn't until my 30s that I really discovered The Beatles or Elvis Presley. I didn't care. Now I do. I get it. Our place and time on this Earth-shenanigan is marred by the cultural moments of our time. Yes, it's historical events, but it is also the art that helps us to find meaning in our lives. It's going to be strange for me to hear Sean-man, Jacob, Dylan, Nikki and Chitunga reminiscing about the era(s) that made their generation (I'm thinking that Penguin club Nikki belonged to and Fortnight now for the youngest ones).
Phew. Aging is beautiful, but also difficult. I'm still trying to catch up on all the history I missed and now new histories are coming at me faster and faster.
But back to "Up Where We Belong." It was the first time I saw a montage and is probably why I chronicle my year every year as I do. There's something about seeing images from the last 365 days that humbles a man.
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