Editor's Corner: The allure of not now

Wouldn't it have been incredible to live in the '60s?

I don't know how many cause-clinging teenagers, or just plain music fans, surviving in the last 30 years have participated in this state of "time machine" yearning. Well, I guess I know of at least one for certain. The fact that I represent a significant slice of society - Americans from age 14 to 30 that could be considered, by some extent, culturally and historically aware - that daydreams, at least from time to time, about belonging to another decade, era, or iconic stage in American history is fairly indisputable. It may be the '70s down South, the '20s in Chicago, or maybe just that one street in Brooklyn during the Bill Cosby era. My recent dreamland is colonial America, but that's beside the point, which is: We all love to have a sort of fake nostalgia for times that we were never a part of.

For the most part, it's understandable and natural. I think most people simply envision their own stage in history as being drearily boring or insignificant, compared to those former times when the significance was, apparently, so palpable. With the exception of the summer of 1776 in Philadelphia (see what I mean?), however, how sure are we that cultural and historical significance can actually be realized in the moment?

Now I certainly don't want my whim of opinion to be mistaken for a researched psychocultural analysis (especially because I might have just made up that word), but I think we can all appreciate a good session of speculation. Did the smooth, noir, crooners of the '20s perceive their perennial coolness at the run-of-the-mill dinner party that we have since framed as the quintessential picture of the decade's peace, simplicity, and wealth? Probably not. I know there's a difference between starting a revolution and thinking your day-in-age is cool, but the same point can be drawn from both. These people were just living. In very much the same way as we are now.

I recently saw Across the Universe, the new musical period piece starring 20-plus Beatles songs and twice as many underthought '60s clichés. Though the movie was subpar as a whole, of all the various adjectives that have been thrown around to describe this drugged-up, cotton-candy-puff of a movie, the most interesting to me is pretentious. I was a bit confused when I heard the word used. How exactly can a movie be pretentious? The more I mulled it over, it started to make sense.

The concept of making a movie with the sheer purpose of glorifying a particular decade as if it were the peak of cultured society - assuming that everything must have been downhill from there - is certainly very pretentious. It's the mindset behind the guy that only listens to classic rock. Saying that everything important in art already happened is very much like saying you already know everything you need to know. And someone who says that is, well, an idiot. And downright pretentious. Let us not forget, there are just as many worthy causes to fight for, just as much great music to listen to, and if it could be quantified, I'm sure there's just as much love today as there was in 1968, or 1978 for that matter. Oh yeah, and I'm fairly sure drugs still exist, so you can check that off as well.

Before we go any further, I assure you that I am not suggesting an all-out cleansing of nostalgia or the longing for simpler, prettier days from our modern mindset. We should certainly appreciate the great times in history, the influential movements in our maturing homeland, and the artists that have inspired millions. But for our generation, we have to be careful not to wrap ourselves around expired eras, at expense of our own greater potential. We can't rule ourselves out like that.

Just think about it. The moment at hand is the newest, most modern, most exciting moment in the history of the world. I realize, of course, that that sentence would serve as an excellent thesis for a First Year Academic Convocation speech. But I really mean it, and I'm not getting paid to say it. It's a simple fact: There has never been a time of greater opportunity than right now. We might not be able to muster the inspiration or the combined revolutionary will to instigate earth-shattering changes at this moment in history - that's another issue altogether - but we certainly have the raw materials to do it. In art, music, science, and everything else, nothing has ever been more possible than it is today. Not even in the '60s.