Golden Age Syndrome

Ok, so it’s not quite Golden Age Syndrome, I just wish I could have lived in certain periods in the past. Like if I could live a couple weeks or even months in a certain time period, I’d be happy. When I’d get bored of living in one time period, I’d go on to the next, and so on. I’ve never been obsessed with time travel or anything, but that would be a great thing to be able to do. But I suppose my presence could screw up the time space continuum or something. Not that I’m so important or significant that I would affect the course of time, but you never know. One little decision that I could make could affect the decision that someone else might make. It’s mind blowing to think about.

But there’s so many things that have happened, mostly in the twentieth century, that I wish I could have been alive for, so that I could be a part of them. Like going to Woodstock. Oh, if only! And now that I’m reading On the Road, I wish I could have been a part of the Beat Generation with Kerouac, roaming the country, making friends with every stranger I come across, drinking, doing drugs, having sex, and doing nothing, never sleeping, having philosophical discussions all night. Things are so different now. Back then, it was semi-normal to roam and hitchhike like that, now, you’d have to be crazy to think you can live that way. Having met someone who lives like that now, I know it’s an insane way to live. But it does seem liberating; to not know what you’ll be doing or who you’ll be meeting from day to day. Any sane person that wants to road trip now has to have money and a plan to start. When Sal, from On the Road, started, he only had fifty dollars. FIFTY DOLLARS! And no car. That’s insane! That’d be like a hundred dollars today, maybe a little more. Crazy. I can’t imagine doing that in this day. But it was feasible then. Which is why I wish I could live in that time and do it the way Kerouac did it. Too bad they didn’t have Instagram then. I’d Instagram the shit out of my 1947 road trip (by the way, I think the Beat Generation was the first hipster generation). 

After my road trip with Jack, I’d want to get in with the Beatles’ crowd. But not until like 1965-66ish, when they started doing drugs and making music of more substance. I’d hang out with them until 1969, then make my way to Woodstock, and take some hits of acid with Janis and Jimi and Joe and whoever else. Then I’d find Queen and ask Freddy Mercury to teach me everything he knows. Maybe I’d go to Seattle in the 90’s and hang out with Nirvana and become BFFs with Dave Grohl. Yeah. 

But all in all, I enjoy my skinny jeans, and Toms, and iPhone, and iPod, and MacBook, and such. And I guess I’ll be ok with just looking back at written history, thinking, “what if?”, and being thankful for those who came before me and lived those lives that I can read about now, and be jealous.

(Oh hey, if you like this idea of the Golden Age Syndrome, go watch Midnight in Paris. That's where I got the idea. And it's a good movie.)

The Beginning

Yep, here we go. 

To point out the obvious, I'm starting my first blog. Ever. Not because I think I have anything important to say, but just so that I can say that I'm doing something somewhat productive. I don't do very many productive things in my life, the way it is now, so why not try. Plus, I've been drinking a wine spritzer thing, and starting a blog seemed like a pretty good idea.

I never took a writing or English course in college (unless you count that fucking FIS class we were all subjected to first year), but I've always enjoyed writing. In middle school and high school, I wrote all the time. I had so many spiral notebooks and composition notebooks, and cute little stationary-like notebooks that I wrote in. It was mostly melodramatic, emo (before "emo" was a thing) poetry about unrequited love. One time I tried to write a novel about these kids that lived in 1949. It was called "Walden's Creek"---not that I was even aware of Thoreau's Walden at that point---and it was basically about my friends at the time, except we lived out in the country in the year 1949. I think I wrote like 2 or 3 chapters and never finished. That has always been a big problem for me, finishing things. Like the screenplay I'm currently writing, but haven't actually worked on for the past couple of months. I keep telling myself that I have writer's block, but I think it's actually just procrastination. When you get to college though, you have to finish things. My writing wasn't that great in college. Maybe I should have taken a writing course. But I was pretty focused on doing just enough to get by, and only taking the courses I needed to in order to graduate. I believe it was my senior year, in music history, when I wrote a paper about the Beatles, and when I got the paper back, my professor had written that it was too conversational. But hey dude, that's just how I write. And come on, it was a paper on the Beatles, how formal does it really need to be? 

So anyway, that was just a little insight into my writing skillz, just so that you're informed. I'd like to be able to tell you what to expect from this blog as time goes on, but I really have no idea. I think this will mostly be a place for me to vent about things that happen in my life, and put some of the thoughts and ideas that I have down into words. Sounds good to me, how about you?