(4 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
Lately, I’ve been thinking about the 1960’s (I was a teenager back then, and I attended a rather large public high school in suburban Boston, MA during those years. The 1960’s, imho, were a mixed bag; It was a wonderful time to grow up, especially being a teenager, and the music was really great back then. The fact that I missed out on dancing to that music due to my social isolation from the other kids bothered me a great deal back then, even though my doctors and my parents pointedly told me (albeit correctly) that I was too emotionally immature to go out with boys. Yet my lack of emotional maturity also precluded my getting involved in the high-flown, lofty, noble causes of the day; the Civil Rights Movement (although I was a bit young for that–I was only in Junior High school at the time), the student revolts and the anti-war movement against our involvement in Indo-China, and a whole host of other things that were happening at the time.
I would frequently cry to my family about my social aridity and isolation, and they’d alternate between being very consoling and having this sort of a “well, it’s your own fault–you have to change.’ attitude, the latter of which I didn’t like. I look back on it now, and I realize that I never knew what would happen when I got older, and my parents constantly worried about my future, due to my poor grades and poor social skills (although they considered the latter secondary, because I think they probably thought that becoming involved in the various movements back then would help me realize that there are other people in this world who had it tougher, and that I’d become not so turned onto myself all the time.
Yet, I’m discovering a lot of other things about myself, also; I didn’t really give a shit about academics and getting top grades. (I basically got a C Average, with afew B’s and even some D’s along the way!) The only reason that I worked at all was to keep afloat so that I wouldn’t end up graduating with the class below me, something I didn’t want for at least two reasons:
A) Since I was born early in the year, I was already one of the oldest kids in my grade, and I didn’t want to stick out like a sore thumb any more than I already did.
B) The class below mine was a much more hostile, nasty bunch of kids (that particular class had a bad, bad reputation for that!), and I don’t think I would’ve been able to handle it.
As much as I love listening to the music that was played back in the 1960’s, many of the older songs now bring tears to my eyes, partly out of the sweetness of them, and partly due to the fact that, crazy as this sounds, make me tear up due to what I didn’t have back then and what I missed: Having more of a social life, and more friends.
At the same time, however, it’s just as well that I never did have a huge social life, or become involved in all the stuff that went on at that time. I might not’ve been able to handle it, I might’ve made mistakes that permanently injured me (which a lot of kids back then did.), and I might not have turned out as well as I did.
I now have a life of my own, own my own home, have a career that I like, and I acquired an education to learn to do things that I like doing, thanks to the help of my wonderfully supporting, loving and stable family. Of course, there were some things along the way that I changed my outlook about, and, to a considerable extent, my desire to not become involved in the noble causes of the day have stuck with me; not wishing to become in the Palestinians’ rights Movement, and other causes that’re similar, and being critical of Boston’s mandatory school busing plan, because i believed (and still believe) that mandatory school busing was yet another attempt to treat the symptoms without actually getting at and treating the underlying cause(s), which are rooted much, much deeper. Anyway, back to the subject at hand:
I changed over from the Democratic Party to the Independent Party (which is called Unenrolled in my present city of residence.), and i no longer buy into the voting for the “lesser of two evils” canard. So, I voted Green last fall at the polls during the POTUS Election, voting my conscience, and i have no regrets. ( I had done a write-in of my own ticket back in 2008). The GOP and the Democratic Party are really two sides of the same coin, and have been for years, having been bought out by the war chest and the great big corporations.
The music and the movie..and the media generally, is now corporate-owned, so it’s a small wonder that there are so few good movies, and so little good music there is out there. Maybe I’m being a bit cynical, but that’s how I am.
One of my favorite rock bands of the 1960’s (besides the Doors, Rolling Stones, the Beatles, and many others, plus I had oh so many favorite songs back then, too!) was/is the Jefferson Airplane, with Grace Slick. Here’s one of my, if not my alltime favorite songs of the Jefferson Airplane:
I love this song, and the video, and, as much as I hate to admit this, I’ve played and replayed it a number of times already since finding it on the website. Grace Slick had a very strong voice, plus she was a very attractive-looking woman, to boot.
However, there are times when the old days are better left alone, because the good old days weren’t always good; there was a great deal of meanness and deceit (which I experienced personally) when I was growing up, as well. The more I look back on those years, however, the more I think that, as much as the effort to change society was made, the more things change, the more they stay the same, if one gets the drift.
Yet, the fact that I’ve got some tickets to go see favorite films of mine (including the tops for me; West Side Story!) heartens me a great deal. Anyway, thanks for letting me vent, and for listening.
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