Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Anniversaries
For whatever reason, it seems as if people are nostalgic for the past, even when that past isn’t all that interesting. This is the feeling I get when I hear of some recent zero-ending anniversaries (30th, 40th and 50th). At least, the events of the year 1977 don’t seem that interesting to me, even though it’s within my own memories.
Last week, it was the commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley. I love Elvis, but I’m afraid I would have to agree with John Lennon when he said that Elvis died when he joined the Army (back in 1961). In other words, Presley became less significant when he followed the establishment route instead of the rebel he started out being. Besides, I’d rather celebrate a person’s life and not his over-bloated death.
Elvis Presley’s real significance was in his early days when he was new and raw before he became sanitized for everyone’s satisfaction, and this rawness gave him his best fans – including a few people across the Atlantic who would try to emulate him – including one John Lennon.
1977 saw some raw moments in itself. There was the Son of Sam murder spree that began the year before. It took great police work (and a few lucky breaks) to finally catch the killer. Then, there was the blackout on a hot July day in New York. Being in the energy industry, I can certainly relate to the anxiety that such outages cause. The mass looting that followed merely exposed the rawness and tensions that were building up in the city. Eventually, the city recovered from that low point, but something tells me that these same social and economic tensions are found across the country and are just waiting for a spark to ignite them. In other words this isn’t just a New York problem.
All in all, I didn’t really care for 1977 and can’t see why anyone would feel nostalgic for that time. The anniversaries that seem more interesting to me happened 40 and even 50 years before.
First, there was the Summer of Love, which mostly happened in San Francisco, especially in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. I’m less interested in the drugs and sordidness that followed, but more in the cultural phenomenon that began there. In many ways, the hippies were the continuation of the Beats from the 1950s with that same out-of-the-mainstream attitude and outlook on life.
The early hippies were filled with an idealism and (dare I say it?) naiveté. Yet, it seems wistful now 40 years on that such a time and such a people existed once. In a way, some aspects of the hippie outlook have pervaded the general populace, not in terms of the drug culture and general sordidness, but in the out-of-the-box way of thinking that every society needs now and then. I think most of us realize that today’s society needs a similar wake-up call.
For me the Summer of Love was marked by the release of the most-talked about album of that time, namely Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band released by those young Elvis Presley fans from across the pond, including one John Lennon. What the Beatles did in recording this album was phenomenal. Today, most of the songs can be seen as dated, but, at that time, it was extraordinary. Knowing what we now know about the making of Sgt. Pepper, it just seems incredible that it was all done with just two four-track tape machines using overdubs upon overdubs. Speaking personally, it was the talk of the whole summer. Everyone asked each other whether they heard the album or not. (The current equivalent would be whether anyone had finished the last Harry Potter book.)
Such phenomena are rarely seen nowadays. Often, we have the over-publicized movie, book...or politician. (The Harry Potter books are an exception, personally speaking.) What Sgt. Pepper showed was that the music that began with the rawness of Elvis Presley had grown up in a decade to a level of sophistication that made even serious scholars listen to it. Unfortunately, this sophistication hadn’t been matched in the subsequent, over-commercialized decades that followed. What the Beatles did was make music out of noise...literally. (Just listen to the last song on the album to know what I mean!)
There were other, more raw, moments 40 years ago like the Newark riots that ruined a city which is still recovering since that time. It would seem that such moments happen every decade or so. We saw it with the mass looting in New York during the blackout 30 years ago. We saw it again with the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles in 1992. Each time it was the same message of a people who were ignored for too long and shunted aside. It’s only a matter of time before another group who are being ignored rise up. We only have to hope that it’s done peacefully, but I doubt it. They’ve been kept down for too long.
Finally, even though it was before my time, 1957 was another momentous year that is being commemorated. There was the school integration case at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. That was a time when a people that were kept down rose up peacefully and with dignity. It was the oppressors who acted violently.
Then there was Sputnik when the Soviet Union actually beat the United States into outer space. This scared many Americans, not the least because they realized that a nuclear warhead could be attached on one of those rockets launched into outer space!
What Sputnik did (besides start the Space Race) was make the United States go on a science and engineering education spree. Many in the science and technology field traced their careers back to this time (among them being my father). Seeing the recent disasters (and near-disasters) with our infrastructure, our mines and our space program, we would hope that a similar wake-up call is in the offing, but not with our current leadership.
This is also the 50th anniversary of the publication of On the Road by Jack Kerouac. This is the ultimate hippie novel written a decade before the existence of the hippies. Kerouac was a leader of the Beat Generation. The Beats (derisively called beatniks) listened to Be-Bop Jazz (Charlie Parker plays an important role in the novel) and got high (marijuana and amphetamines being the drugs of choice). [In contrast, the hippies listened to – and played - Rock and Roll and used LSD in addition to marijuana and amphetamines.]
Legend has it that Jack Kerouac wrote the novel in one sitting taking very few breaks while high on amphetamines. He was said to have typed it on a continuous scroll of teletype paper. In reality, he drank coffee and taped the paper into a scroll. Personally, I prefer the legend. (That scroll was recently sold at auction and is now being studied by scholars.)
On the Road, as its name implies, is about a roadtrip by car across America. Kerouac was actually writing about a similar roadtrip he took a decade before where he wanted to emulate the hobos who traveled by train in the 1930s. So, in a sense, he was looking at a past that was no more. The irony is that, in writing about this nostalgic past, he influenced people in the future.
Many people who read it (including this one) pictured themselves being on the road following their wanderlust. Many of them (not including this one) actually took that trip. Some ended up on Haight-Ashbury during that Summer of Love. Others took more figurative trips of the imagination in film (George Lucas), literature (Kurt Vonnegut) or technology (Steve Jobs). What Kerouac did was open the road of possibilities to millions. His past became our future.
It may be a reflection of our present that makes us long for more exciting times (even if it is 1977). If anything, we seem to be living in a tragic era mixed with a comedy of errors. Because of this, one could say we may be excused for being nostalgic. Yet, in our wistful longings for our past, we should also think about our future.
Last week, it was the commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley. I love Elvis, but I’m afraid I would have to agree with John Lennon when he said that Elvis died when he joined the Army (back in 1961). In other words, Presley became less significant when he followed the establishment route instead of the rebel he started out being. Besides, I’d rather celebrate a person’s life and not his over-bloated death.
Elvis Presley’s real significance was in his early days when he was new and raw before he became sanitized for everyone’s satisfaction, and this rawness gave him his best fans – including a few people across the Atlantic who would try to emulate him – including one John Lennon.
1977 saw some raw moments in itself. There was the Son of Sam murder spree that began the year before. It took great police work (and a few lucky breaks) to finally catch the killer. Then, there was the blackout on a hot July day in New York. Being in the energy industry, I can certainly relate to the anxiety that such outages cause. The mass looting that followed merely exposed the rawness and tensions that were building up in the city. Eventually, the city recovered from that low point, but something tells me that these same social and economic tensions are found across the country and are just waiting for a spark to ignite them. In other words this isn’t just a New York problem.
All in all, I didn’t really care for 1977 and can’t see why anyone would feel nostalgic for that time. The anniversaries that seem more interesting to me happened 40 and even 50 years before.
First, there was the Summer of Love, which mostly happened in San Francisco, especially in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. I’m less interested in the drugs and sordidness that followed, but more in the cultural phenomenon that began there. In many ways, the hippies were the continuation of the Beats from the 1950s with that same out-of-the-mainstream attitude and outlook on life.
The early hippies were filled with an idealism and (dare I say it?) naiveté. Yet, it seems wistful now 40 years on that such a time and such a people existed once. In a way, some aspects of the hippie outlook have pervaded the general populace, not in terms of the drug culture and general sordidness, but in the out-of-the-box way of thinking that every society needs now and then. I think most of us realize that today’s society needs a similar wake-up call.
For me the Summer of Love was marked by the release of the most-talked about album of that time, namely Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band released by those young Elvis Presley fans from across the pond, including one John Lennon. What the Beatles did in recording this album was phenomenal. Today, most of the songs can be seen as dated, but, at that time, it was extraordinary. Knowing what we now know about the making of Sgt. Pepper, it just seems incredible that it was all done with just two four-track tape machines using overdubs upon overdubs. Speaking personally, it was the talk of the whole summer. Everyone asked each other whether they heard the album or not. (The current equivalent would be whether anyone had finished the last Harry Potter book.)
Such phenomena are rarely seen nowadays. Often, we have the over-publicized movie, book...or politician. (The Harry Potter books are an exception, personally speaking.) What Sgt. Pepper showed was that the music that began with the rawness of Elvis Presley had grown up in a decade to a level of sophistication that made even serious scholars listen to it. Unfortunately, this sophistication hadn’t been matched in the subsequent, over-commercialized decades that followed. What the Beatles did was make music out of noise...literally. (Just listen to the last song on the album to know what I mean!)
There were other, more raw, moments 40 years ago like the Newark riots that ruined a city which is still recovering since that time. It would seem that such moments happen every decade or so. We saw it with the mass looting in New York during the blackout 30 years ago. We saw it again with the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles in 1992. Each time it was the same message of a people who were ignored for too long and shunted aside. It’s only a matter of time before another group who are being ignored rise up. We only have to hope that it’s done peacefully, but I doubt it. They’ve been kept down for too long.
Finally, even though it was before my time, 1957 was another momentous year that is being commemorated. There was the school integration case at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. That was a time when a people that were kept down rose up peacefully and with dignity. It was the oppressors who acted violently.
Then there was Sputnik when the Soviet Union actually beat the United States into outer space. This scared many Americans, not the least because they realized that a nuclear warhead could be attached on one of those rockets launched into outer space!
What Sputnik did (besides start the Space Race) was make the United States go on a science and engineering education spree. Many in the science and technology field traced their careers back to this time (among them being my father). Seeing the recent disasters (and near-disasters) with our infrastructure, our mines and our space program, we would hope that a similar wake-up call is in the offing, but not with our current leadership.
This is also the 50th anniversary of the publication of On the Road by Jack Kerouac. This is the ultimate hippie novel written a decade before the existence of the hippies. Kerouac was a leader of the Beat Generation. The Beats (derisively called beatniks) listened to Be-Bop Jazz (Charlie Parker plays an important role in the novel) and got high (marijuana and amphetamines being the drugs of choice). [In contrast, the hippies listened to – and played - Rock and Roll and used LSD in addition to marijuana and amphetamines.]
Legend has it that Jack Kerouac wrote the novel in one sitting taking very few breaks while high on amphetamines. He was said to have typed it on a continuous scroll of teletype paper. In reality, he drank coffee and taped the paper into a scroll. Personally, I prefer the legend. (That scroll was recently sold at auction and is now being studied by scholars.)
On the Road, as its name implies, is about a roadtrip by car across America. Kerouac was actually writing about a similar roadtrip he took a decade before where he wanted to emulate the hobos who traveled by train in the 1930s. So, in a sense, he was looking at a past that was no more. The irony is that, in writing about this nostalgic past, he influenced people in the future.
Many people who read it (including this one) pictured themselves being on the road following their wanderlust. Many of them (not including this one) actually took that trip. Some ended up on Haight-Ashbury during that Summer of Love. Others took more figurative trips of the imagination in film (George Lucas), literature (Kurt Vonnegut) or technology (Steve Jobs). What Kerouac did was open the road of possibilities to millions. His past became our future.
It may be a reflection of our present that makes us long for more exciting times (even if it is 1977). If anything, we seem to be living in a tragic era mixed with a comedy of errors. Because of this, one could say we may be excused for being nostalgic. Yet, in our wistful longings for our past, we should also think about our future.
