There’s something in this article that rankles my humbug nature, Up With Grups. Maybe it’s the undignified me-tooism of 40-something music enthusiasts desperate to hold on to their cultural relevance in a world of youth fluff. Let it go. Embrace elderhood and maturity, and maybe even growth.
“All of the really good music right now has absolutely precise parallels to the best music of the eighties, from Franz Ferdinand to Interpol to Death Cab—anything you can name,†says Michael Hirschorn, the 42-year-old executive vice-president of original programming and production at VH1. “Plus, the 20-year-olds are all listening to the Cure and New Order anyway. It’s created a kind of mass confusion. I was at the Coachella festival last year, and the groups people were most stoked about were Gang of Four and New Order.†No wonder Grups like today’s indie music: It sounds exactly like the indie music of their youth. Which, as it happens, is what kids today like, too, which is why today’s new music all sounds like it’s twenty years old. And thus the culture grinds to a halt, in a screech of guitar feedback.
As a result, says Hirschorn, “some of the older parents I know who have teenagers claim that there’s no generation gap anymore. They say they get along perfectly with their kids. They listen to the same music. To me, that seems somewhat laughable. But I do remember when I was young, trying to explain the Beatles to my dad, and he didn’t even know who they were. I don’t think that’s possible today.â€
Something about that is sad, like an older woman who dresses in revealing outfits and belly button jewelry. It’s an attitude of denial. Being on the outside and wanting back in.
I think there is something essentially “youthful” about making and enjoying music. That’s an attractive aspect to it. Like many major artistic achievements, great music is most often produced by young people. When we’re young do we live in a mental world of greater artistic feeling? I have this theory that when you’re in that period of adolescence from puberty to your early twenties, your brain is elastic and emotional, having not been fully constructed into a more or less rigid framework of habits and processes. We do know that the adolescent brain is structurally different from adult brains. This accounts for much of the high risk behavior we associate with youth. Maybe this mental state makes music and art more personally impactful and significant than at any other time in your life. Why else do we feel a particular affinity for the music of our youth? I’m just thinking out loud here. Maybe there are no rigid boundaries between young and old, but should we differentiate somehow?
I’ve always appreciated the ceremonies in other cultures that attend the transition into adulthood. Then you have some cultural expectation of behavior. There are rules and guidelines as to what you need to do. In our culture, we no longer have a real concept of what is expected of the individual. It is too ad hoc, too amorphous… for me. At least in a world of rules you have the enjoyment of defying convention and expressing your individuality. But, what happens when expressing your individuality is something everyone does?
I’ve been rereading Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, the archetypical philosopher-king and Roman Caesar. Meditations is a diary-like accounting of Marcus Aurelius’ thoughts and ideas. You can almost imagine him encamped with his legions on the Danube, writing down his thoughts and examining his life. The original title is closer in meaning to “notes to himself” rather than what most modern people think of when they hear the word “meditation”. It is a highly enjoyable and thought-provoking read. The personal, thoughtful writing style gives you a real sense of the man, who lived and died more than two thousand years ago. A student of the Stoic school, Marcus Aurelius reflects on life and death and often about how to endure and accept what we cannot change. Here are a few quotations:
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