Reflections 1

I found this in a journal that that I sometimes write in . Apparently I wrote it back in January of this year. I thought I'd share it.

1965-1975

We weren’t wrong and we weren’t right, we were young and the world had not yet gone into reverse.  Yet looking back I feel a certain embarrassment at our levels of blind self-righteousness – or least at mine as a reflection of the generational delusion as a whole.  That said, I’ve found little that I can repudiate of what we once believed or more precisely toyed with as possible.

There was I believe genuine wisdom and well grounded ideas immersed in the tangle of overstatement and delusional idealism.  Sometimes profound new ideas pointing to a real course correction for the human race as whole would bob to the surface.  But then they would sink again amidst the swirling flotsam and jetsam of the day to be lost amidst the cacophony  spewing forth from gifted charlatans, revolutionary romantics and charming blowhards.

In the 1950’s a crude adolescent-oriented, electronically amplified music was born of the mating of southern ‘Rockabilly’ and urban ‘rhythm and blues’ - ‘Rock and Roll.’ It would dominate popular music for the next 50 years. But by the mid 1960’s a new generation of musicians built on and enhanced this foundation by going back to the source – the solid art of guitar blues chords coming out of the Mississippi Delta by way of Chicago. This new improved version of “rock and roll’ began to be respected even by Jazz aficionados. And when spiked by psychedelic drugs it became a force to reckon with especially when leavened with powerful socially conscious poetry-infused lyrics from veterans of the folk music revival of early 60’s.  The “roll” part was dropped and it became simply known as ”Rock.” And as such it would have worldwide impact, and serve as the soundtrack for a brave attempt at crashing the gates of the existing order.

Of course as we know those gates survived that assault and were subsequently stoutly reinforced.  Decades have passed and dreams of overthrow have dissipated into sad nostalgia, a nostalgia that mixes the usual remorse for a wasted youth with something more, a longing for a time when people actually believed the future held hope.   

Jan 18, 2011