Catching the Christmas spirit. December 2024. Photo by me.
This has felt like the quickest
Christmas season, I thought, as I walked into Rich's, or the shell of
what was a Rich's department store until Macy's murdered the Atlanta
institution. I will forever have a warm place in my
heart for Rich's, the Christmas of 1992, working there and being a
part of the team to bring the holidays alive at a local senior living
home and dodging Holly under her mistletoe trap. I also would like to relive the late seventies with my
grandfather purchasing me chocolate covered peanuts from the bakery at the
Cumberland Mall Rich's or the eighties with my mother buying eclairs
from the bakery at the Cobb Center store. Yet, those are Christmases past and
the scent of expensive leather no longer wafted through the store as I
looked at the marble floor.
I have written about so many
Christmases from the 1970s through the 2000s which were terrible,
strange, oddly funny or weird in all four of my books that you could
collectively call them The Art of Bad Christmases Series. I promise, they are fun for the
entire family and should be read with a cup of whiskey laced eggnog by the fireplace.
The Christmas of 2024 was tame and could never
be used as inspiration for a story in a book and there are no
complaints about that. I went to see Christmas light displays, made
notes for my next novel and had some satisfying conversations.
I
also got sick on the weekend before Christmas. While catching the Christmas spirit
among the last minute crowds on Sunday at a mall, I caught a
cold. Perhaps I caught it from the foolish man wearing gym shorts in forty degree weather as he trudged by hopefully seeking out a bargain on some pants and underwear.
Tube Socks The Stray Kitty performs. December 2024. Photo by me.
My nose ran marathons and I had used so much Kleenex
that I was Rudolph or an 80s rock star coke fiend without the fun. That was the big mishap this year. There were no family secrets revealed and nothing smelling of reindeer shit came down the chimney; there was no Claxton fruitcake this year either. I napped on
Christmas and worked my way through a box of chocolates, not the old and discolored kind my grandmother gave me each Christmas as a kid that resembled something from a litterbox. The
neighborhood stray cat visited briefly and performed Stop, Drop and Roll in the rose beds too.
Between naps,
cat entertainment, cups of coffee and squirts of nasal spray my
thoughts went through Shadow's Gravity, my last novel. I was
replaying scenes and I kept getting stuck on how I had described a
three-way sex scene as going skiing. I had no embarrassment over it
and laughed several times that I had the guts to write honestly about my early twenties. It was
the Christmas of the three of us singing RENT'sSeasons of Love on repeat so...
Rarely do I ever think of a reader's reaction to something I write,
but about that particular scene I have. I hope they laughed and that
image is permanently burned into their brain.
My mind also pondered The Dead Internet Theory, which is not entirely true, but with AI and bots it seems to be
becoming more true by the passing day. If it can take down
social media or help create a new and better one then maybe it is not
such a bad thing. I miss the 90s internet of Geocities websites
and AOL chatrooms on every imaginable topic. The internet had hope
and Encarta! I still have a working AOL email address from the 90s
which I check daily, radioxguy@aol.com,
and I am never surrendering it.
The day after Christmas, I am glad the whole “shebang”, a
fine word my mother often used and I never hear anymore, is over. Also, I swear I
watched the music video for WHAM's Last Christmas in 4K only twice
this year.
The amount of hairspray that was used in the making of that video would be enough to fill an oil tanker.
Sweeping up leaves on the driveway, I
realized there were only six days until Christmas. I tugged at my
fleece pullover and wondered where had the time gone. It seems like
the other day it was October and the leaves were only beginning to
change and we were on the eve of deciding whether democracy lived or
died. Wherever the times goes, to the land of lost socks, the
forgotten news bin of people in New Jersey mistaking planes for alien
drones or the recycle bin of my desktop – I suppose it does not
matter.
I found new Christmas music between
cleaning out the garage, painting a room and browsing online sales
that were rather lackluster this year. My soundtrack for much of the last
month has been the double album Ghosts of Christmas Past (Remake)
released in 2015 by the Belgian record label Les Disques du
Crepuscule.
It is a mix of thirty-five tracks of
offbeat, eclectic, amusing new wave and post punk Christmas songs.
The artists on it include Aztec Camera, Tuxedomoon, The Durutti
Column, Michael Nyman, Isolation Ward, Ultramarine and others. It is the type of album that holds your attention and takes surprising turns down streets unfamiliar. I think of it as wearing Raybans on an overcast day because why not?
It sure as hell beats another suffering
through of Mariah Carey's All I Want For Christmas Is You. That song makes me think of the kind of person such as an ex who was so shallow that he would sing that song to himself and point at a mirror or any shiny reflective surface.
Some of my favorites on the album are:
Isolation Ward's Lamina Christus
The Wake's Jesus From The Block
Winston Tong's Twelve Days of Christmas. Who doesn't want seven Arab houseboys?
Swinging Buildings' Praying for a Cheaper Christmas
Marsheaux's We Met Bernard Sumner at a Christmas Party Last Night. The title alone makes it a favorite.
Those are only a few of my favorites, I have enjoyed listening to the album from beginning to end over and over. There is only one song that I dislike, The Arcadians' Write Your Letter. It stands out from the rest of the album as it sounds as if it is straight out of the 1960s. I hear it and think I should put a flower behind one ear, a feather behind the other, wear a fringe vest and hitchhike barefoot through Laurel Canyon.
My world is like a cloudy day of gauzy memories, the evening is fading, the lights are just coming on to battle against the night and anything is possible. I brush the bangs out of my eyes and finger the hole in my wool sweater listening to this album and it reminds me of my ghosts of Christmas past.
My old Nissan 200SX in the falling snow Christmas morning 1993.
For a minute I am in the early
nineties walking out the door of my mother's house on a dim Christmas
morning. Snow showers are gushing flakes and I am there with my video
camera recording all of it. I am twenty years old turning to look at the
stickers for Amnesty International, the World Wildlife Fund and 99X
on the back of my car. The earthy scent of the fallen pin oak leaves is overpowering and my hands are cold. Where has the time really gone?
The post office in Bethlehem, Georgia. Photo by me, December 2024.
Growing up in the 1980s and watching Atlanta television news there were some stories that would be recycled every year during the holiday season between Thanksgiving and New Year. One was the lighting of the Rich's Great Tree in Downtown, there would the annual Hosea Feed The Hungry and Homeless on Thanksgiving, the Christmas parade, the Peach Drop at Underground and at least one of the television stations would assign a field reporter to drive northeast of town to far-flung Bethlehem, Georgia in Barrow County to do a story on Christmas cards.
Bethlehem, Georgia in 1978 when I was five years old. It looked more like a traditional town then than it does today. The tiny post office then is in the second row on the right. Images courtesy WSB-TV archives at the University of Georgia.
Bethlehem, Georgia in December 2023 and December 2024. There is very little remaining of what stood in the late 70s. It looks less like a town today and more like a wide spot in the road. Photos by me.
I did not know where Bethlehem, Georgia was located when I was a child in Paulding County. I had never been there until a few years ago when I moved out of Atlanta. Now I pass through every couple of weeks on my way to Monroe. Bethlehem is a small town, population seven hundred and fifteen as of the 2020 census, that is more of a community than a true town with a cluster of businesses and sidewalks. It reminds me of where I grew up in another small Georgia community in the 1970s and 80s. Except, Bethlehem has one traffic light and a post office and my hometown did not. My old community has long since been swallowed by the Atlanta sprawl of subdivisions and shopping centers and unfortunately the sprawl is now beginning to edge towards Bethlehem too. I hate to see it happen again as no place in Georgia north of the Fall Line seems to be immune from it.
By Bureau of Engraving and Printing. - U.S. Postal Service; National Postal Museum: 1967 Christmas Issue
There is a special Christmas tradition that this little town just off the newly finished exit off Highway 316 is known for: the Christmas postmark from Bethlehem for Christmas cards. The tradition began in 1967 and at the time included a special issue postage stamp from the United States Postal Service which has since been discontinued. The special postmark still includes the Three Wise Men and the Star of Bethlehem and reads, 'Greetings from Bethlehem.' During the first Christmas season, the tiny post office that employed a postmaster general and one part-time employee handled 500,000 cards and letters. Over three dozen temporary employees were hired to handle the volume.
Over the decades since, I wondered if maybe the tradition had waned, but
when I mailed cards this past Sunday, the slot for out of town mail was
stuffed full. It was a happy sight for me to know that people were still
sending cards and sending them out of Bethlehem for the postmark. In a
time when the cheap spectacle reigns supreme over value and people
cannot seem to be bothered with most traditions anymore like dressing
appropriately for funerals and weddings it is surprising to know that
this one continues.
Every year my family sent out Christmas cards and I still carry on the
tradition though I never receive a single card in return. The last year I
received a card in the mail was in 2003, the last Christmas my mother
was alive. I refuse to let the tradition die that I see as a way to
acknowledge someone and wish them well during the holidays without
relying on a soon to be forgotten social media greeting. I wrote about my memories of Christmas cards last year.
Merry Christmas, season's greetings and happy holidays to you.
The other night I decided to watch one of my favorite films, Harold and Maude about an eccentric young man who falls in love with an eccentric and much, much older woman. The two meet in the 1971 film over their shared appreciation or hobby for attending the funerals of strangers. It might sound morbid, but this is a tender and comedic take on a coming of age story. I have loved this dark comedy film since I saw it as a child in the 1980s and I had a bit of a crush on the slim Bud Cort with his dark hair and blue eyes. The movie, directed by Hal Ashby who also made one of my other favorite films Being There, was a critical and commercial flop when it was released, but over the decades it found its audience and became a cult classic.
The film was on my mind due to the recent sudden death of a cousin. Their death, was the second sudden death of a cousin this year. Both were too young to have died and both died alone at home only to be discovered later. The coincidental circumstances seemed odd to me being so close together. Perhaps it says something greater about the loneliness and isolation of modern life in the United States stitched together by cell phones and social media. Or maybe it simply says something about those individuals.
Additionally I was bothered at how the information of the deaths spread through the family. In both cases I was notified by text message, one from a family member and the other from an elementary school classmate who was friends with my cousin and to which I was very grateful. In the second case, I would have likely not known about my cousin's death until much later or at all. It is possible as there have been other family deaths over the years that I never knew about until many years later. These were people I was close with as a child, had meant something to me and it would have been respectful to have said goodbye at their funeral.
Is it so hard to pick up the phone and text or better yet call someone to tell them that a family member has died? Have we lost even that little bit of decency and courtesy?
How deaths are announced now are on social media like a press release written to whom it may concern and especially on Facebook sandwiched between the silly cat videos, fattening recipes, political gripes and photos of restaurant meals. There are several problems with this way of announcing a person's death.
It is unseemly for a person to log onto to Facebook, if one does that at all, and scroll through the newsfeed of ads and discover that your cousin or anyone you know has died like it was a status update of having gone for a walk in the woods.
Another is that not everyone has Facebook or there are people like me who go months or years without logging into it. I loathe Facebook despite having an account because of how the service operates and how people use it. One significant problem with announcing a death on Facebook is that there is no guarantee that the algorithms will allow it to be seen and not buried in the crap of ads, pages and groups that I do not follow or all the stupid recipe posts from people who seem to think posting hundreds of times a day on Facebook is a real job. You cannot assume that just because you posted something on the service that people will actually see it.
At the conclusion of one's life do they not deserve better than to become a status update on Facebook? What does it say about them and what does it say about us that this is thought to be acceptable manners?
I am as frustrated as Harold was with his mother and society in the early 1970s. I do not live on a remote island without a phone or lack an outside connection to the world that makes me unreachable. I have all of the same means of communication available to me and more than when people seemed to pass on family news quite easily and quickly before the invention of Facebook. It is no wonder people are dying alone in isolation because people are losing touch with their humanity due to the coldness of technology. Human connections have been replaced with technological ones and people will not realize it until it is too late as they clutch their cell phones, stare into the abyss and keep feeding the machines and algorithms absolutely and mind-numbingly meaningless data.
Harold and Maude, 1971.
In order for me to find out about my cousin's death via Facebook, I had to track it down through specifically searching for it. I only found out about the funeral plans two days in advance through third hand information from someone I am not even friends with and that is pathetic. The funeral stood a better chance of Harold and Maude randomly attending than it did for me. I cannot attend due to the scheduling and I will find my own way of saying goodbye like Harold driving his car over the cliff and walking away playing the banjo.
The evenings are the time of day I love the most in the winter. The sunset is early, by five thirty, in the first part of December and there is a cozy feeling about it. The nights are longer than the days and it is fun to count up the hours that are spent below freezing. During cold spells even this far south we can spend more hours in a day below freezing than above. During true Arctic outbreaks there are days when it never climbs above freezing even with the brightest sun.
I love cold weather, I feel more alive when it slaps me in the face and I can wear a heavy wool coat and a scarf. I enjoy watching the last of the light fade into the west from my kitchen windows and feeling tucked away inside the house. I am not out much in the night anymore, my eyesight is too poor for night driving even with glasses. It makes me feel older than I am, but I like looking out on the descending darkness from inside. So many times I have had to cut an activity short or end visiting with someone to beat the darkness home.
Tuesday evening with temperatures in the thirties I listened to an old friend, George Winston's December album. It enters my mind this time of year, every year, with the blurred Christmas lights, frosty ground and chilled red noses. I feel the cold and peacefulness just from looking at the simple and sophisticated early 80s cover. The music is not all that challenging for classical music, but it need not be. It is possible to listen to music as it is to look at art or read a novel for the simple reasons of joy and pleasure. Not everything has to be a chore or be viewed with a critical filter as is all too common today as if everybody is an expert or academic or a wannabe critic.
I tried to remember when I first heard George Winston's December album. It would have been in the early 80s when it was released in 1982 as this music seems to have always been with me, but I cannot pinpoint a specific memory. Maybe it was in a gifted class or riding with my father in his Cadillac and this played on Peach FM 95 Atlanta? I would like to think that I can remember everything, but that is impossible. It seems doubly impossible that an album of pastoral piano solos would reach number fifty-four on the Billboard charts or sell three million copies, but December did. It was a different time when instrumental music had a place on the radio and perhaps the American populace was less regimented in its listening choices. I was nine years old at the time and I remember that I listened to or heard all genres of music, but maybe my family and childhood were exceptional in that regard and I cannot project that onto the country as a whole.
My favorite piece from the album would be the Variations on the Kanon which refers to Johann Pachelbel's Canon in D. It is a more jaunty arrangement than the overly sentimental Jean-Francois Paillard arrangement that was popularized in the 1980 filmOrdinary People. I love that film, relate to much of it, and think Donald Sutherland, Mary Tyler Moore, Judd Hirsch and Timothy Hutton were outstanding in it - but not that version of Canon in D.
Timothy Hutton and Mary Tyler Moore in Ordinary People
That film got so much right from the again "simple and sophisticated" clothes with a neutral palette that my mother wore and which appeared briefly in the U.S. from the late seventies into the early eighties before bold colors took over, the styling, the acting and Timothy Hutton was epically adorable and I knew that at seven years old. Except the music...I have gotten far, far off the path of where I began and damn if I cannot help myself against the beauty of Hutton in that film.
But one more photo of Timothy Hutton stretched out on a bed and in a well made sweater back when sweaters were thick, worth the money and made in the U.S.A. Yes, sweaters are not what they used to be, just like music, and you can read about why that is here. The last high quality sweater I can remember buying in an average department store was in the early nineties.
Back to December and 2024.
I still listen to this album in the winter and not just at Christmas, but into early March when the trees are bare, nights can be cold, there is the slimmest possibility of snow and the sun sets early. Piano solos may not chart anymore on Billboard, sweaters and movies are not as good as they were, Timothy Hutton and I have both aged, I cannot see at night, but I can still enjoy the fading winter light and December. The times and tastes have changed, but there are classics around as simple as a winter evening to enjoy. Seek them out and cherish them.
The early sunsets of late fall a week ago were spectacular ahead of rain and an upcoming colder weather pattern. The sky was impossible to ignore. It was fiery ribbons one day that twisted and streaked like the breathe of a dragon burning the earth in judgement.
Photo by me, November 2024.
Leaving Athens and heading toward home on Highway 316 was a drive into the ever morphing light.
Photo by me, November 2024.
You would have thought the world was coming to its end at the sun's farewell. The dragon breathe sky became an inverted Rothko painting.
The next day it was late, less than an hour before sunset, when I set out for a walk.
Photo by me, November 2024.
Around a lake I went and passed a foraging doe. To the east, the light reflected on a still lake as I crossed a bridge. By the time I had reached another side of the lake a few miles onward, the sun was long gone over the western horizon.
Photo by me, November 2024.
The last rays of sunshine beamed upward over the hills and across the water. It was a remarkable sight and I stood to look at it in the near darkness. The sun has set on this country, the decaying empire, after the morality play of the last election in which so many people sold their morals for whatever reason. No matter how dark it may become in the next few years as the light retreats, there will always be beauty to find and follow.
Photo by me, November 2024.
Photo by me, November 2024.
Photo by me, November 2024.
The rain came. Wednesday morning broke after a day and night of rainfall. In the half dark and half light of seven in the morning I looked at the water clinging to some of the roses in the rear of the house. They were more beautiful with the water droplets. The extra weight made the bushes bow as if recognizing the coming cold that was going to bring an end to the show of blossoms until next spring. Or I assume such, as one year I had roses blooming in January covered in snow.
Photo by me, November 2024.
Photo by me, November 2024.
In the subsequent cold that I had been waiting on for months, I planted tulip bulbs. I planted them in a couple of beds of existing tulips to fill in some of the spaces for next spring.
Photo by me, April 2024.
The tulips blooming last spring were a joy, but were too sparse for my liking. Next spring, no matter how the world may be, I want to at least have more joyful tulips. I should have twice as many next year.
Over four days I read Donna Tartt's 1992 novel, The Secret History. In 2013 I tried to read her novel, The Goldfinch, but I was not in the mood for it and put it down in the first chapter. The book felt like too much of a commitment at the time. With The Secret History I was absorbed and could not put it down with my feet on my desk and a throw wrapping my legs. It was her debut novel and at times that did show through in the writing as some passages were over-written and the ending drags on and on and on. The book needed a stronger editing hand for certain. By the epilogue, I did not much care what happened to the characters and skimmed some paragraphs. Getting to that point though, I did enjoy the novel. I will have to attempt The Goldfinch again.
I read somewhere that the character of the Classics professor in The Secret History, Julian, was possibly inspired by Claude Fredericks, who was a teacher at Bennington College. Claude unlike the character Julian was a gay man and was once the lover of poet James Merrill. Merrill died in 1995 of AIDS at age sixty-eight. For many years I have had a crush on the younger version of Merrill. He was a beautiful young man. I had not known that he was involved with Fredericks, but I was aware of his relationship with the much older Kimon Friar when he was a student at Amherst.
A young and captivating James Merrill.
James was an accomplished poet and Pulitzer Prize winner like Donna Tartt. Merrill was the son of the founding half of Merrill Lynch that shared his last name. Merrill for such a beauty, had odd taste in the looks of men that attracted him. Neither Fredericks or Friar were much to look at, but Merrill was very much in love with Friar as evidenced in his journals.
At the age of nineteen in 1945 when his romance with Friar is discovered by his mother, James Merrill writes to Friar, "There is one great lesson you can teach me, after teaching me to love. Teach me to suffer."
Despite not matching the physical description of the gay character Francis in The Secret History, I pictured Merrill in that role. Francis and Merrill were both from wealthy Northeastern families and I wanted that character to be attractive. Now that I am aware of his relationship with Claude Fredericks, it makes sense to me. It makes even more sense for him to be that character when you consider that Kimon Friar was Greek and a teacher of Merrill's when they were involved.
Esquire Magazine 2019
While I am on the subject of Tartt and Bennington College, I have been listening to the podcast Once Upon A Time...at Bennington College. I am on episode five and was hoping for some insight into Tartt and her schooling at Bennington. So far it has been the Bret Easton Ellis show and people's obsession with him wearing Wayfarer shoes like it was a milestone in 80s fashion history. Tartt declined to be interviewed for the podcast and I am beginning to think that was a wise decision. Tartt, a fellow southerner born in Greenwood, Mississippi, has no social media, seldom does interviews and keeps a low profile away from the media circus. I cannot blame her.
"It's
funny how the music puts the times in perspective, add a soundtrack to
your life and perfect it." The Japanese DJ Nujabes from Luv(sic.) pt 3 or the extended version
with the sampled Rod Mckuen introduction from In Search of Eros (1963).
In Search of Eros, Rod Mckuen
How anyone ever thought that Mckuen was straight, I cannot understand. Sure he lied about dating women, having children in Europe and called his longtime lover his brother, but that cover art should have given him away. Mckuen is mentioned in my novel Shadow's Gravity during a winter's night conversation between Everett and me in Louisville.
Me at WETbar left, Halo on right. Photos 2006.
I swear I first heard this song in Halo
Lounge in the basement of the Biltmore way back in the mid 2000s when it
was a gay/mixed crowd and it was cool and the crowd pretty. Also, RIP
WETbar from those days. A different life, that nightlife.
Blurry nights. WETbar's upstairs patio had the best view. Photo by me, 2006.
WETbar. Photo by me, 2008.
WETbar. Photo by me, 2008.
A different life that nightlife, but were those years lived by a different me? I would never disavow those years. So many names lost to time, but the faces are all there to be summoned with closed eyes. I enjoyed it then with no regrets and when the lights went up for the final time I was glad it was over. Damn the person who reminded of that Nujabes song and making me miss those years.
"With the whole city fast asleep, out cold
True words seem to rise to the lips, take hold..."
Wednesday, November 5, 1980— Düsseldorf—Baden Baden—Stuttgart
I woke up at 3:00 in the morning and I heard the sad news of Carter losing so desperately to Reagan. It was the first time a president conceded so early. He had tears in his eyes.
I couldn’t sleep and I took a Valium. - Andy Warhol from The Andy Warhol Diaries
Artwork by the late Keith Haring.
Iwas writing a lengthy essay about the election, the sanctimonious behavior of the Democratic Party over the last several years and what it all meant for the good ol' U.S.A., but political obsession is a pointless luxury. I do not much enjoy writing about politics and whining about it is not something I indulge, as I have already shared my opinion on political whiners of all stripes. The 90s version of me in my youth was interested in sitting in cozy rooms discussing politics over coffee, board games and Nirvana with friends. The fifty-something version of me typing onto a screen, still drinking coffee by the gallon, listening to post-punk music and sitting in my house is much less interested in modern political dialogue that intrudes on and divides EVERYTHING. Politics went from a hobby in the 90s to a way of life for far too many people in the world.
Besides, neither party appeals to me. I am not a third-party person; I am an independent. Oligarchs and religious types prop up the Republicans and the Democratic Party is the NPR of political parties that relishes shitting on its audience and wonders why fewer are listening. I stopped listening to NPR years ago and for good reason - I have too much self-respect to be made to feel like I am supposed to be guilty for all of humanity's crimes. Fuck that noise.
Four days after the election, I scrolled past the scorched earth Democratic meltdowns and conspiracy theories on Facebook from
the reactionaries and rolled my eyes. My first thought was, where were
they in the eighties and nineties when people like me were ostracized
for being gay, denied basic human decency, lost jobs, were attacked, were dying of AIDS or could not find a
place to live? Up until now, some people have been spoiled and never
faced loss or hardship until their middle age and somehow they looked
the other way until it personally affected them. I take no satisfaction
in their plight, but pardon me for looking the other way and having little sympathy.
Even in the Democratic stronghold of Athens, Georgia Trump signs were
evident. Trump received 30 percent of the vote there in 2024, up from 28
percent in 2020 and 2016. Photo by me, November 2024.
The outcome of the election was obvious if you were paying attention and did not believe the polls or the media or the online pundits who all claimed it was going to be close. The predictions of a close race were good for subscriptions to Substacks,
newspapers, Youtube channels and for television ratings. Through various sources, people injected the drama straight into their necks and believed anyone regardless of their lack of credibility as long as they told them what they wanted to hear. Reality turned out to be an anticlimactic Electoral College blowout, a downright stomping for Democrats. The majority of the 2024 voters were fed up with the illegal immigration problems and abuses, held the perception that the economy was bad and made it sparkling clear that a change was needed.
August 2024 in Athens, Georgia. Photo by me.
The result was no surprise for those who
get out of our bubbles and traverse the back roads. I felt it coming like my southern accent coming on when I am tired. I grew up in rural Georgia in the 1970s
and 80s and have lived most of my life in this state. Though most of
my adult life has existed inside the city of Atlanta, I still know it from end to end like a long-ago lover in a Paulding County tunnel. In the months leading up to the
election from one end of the state to the other down the two-lane and sometimes one-lane back roads
of the countryside and even on suburban Atlanta streets, I saw more Trump yard signs, flags and
campaign materials strewn in yards than I did for Harris. Forget any notion that Trump voters are shy. I have found that public displays of support are a better barometer of voter enthusiasm than some dude making Youtube videos in his spare bedroom in his underwear or paid celebrity endorsements.
Left to right: Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat. Generra Clothing, Max Headroom and 80s MTV.
Hillary Clinton's loss was a stunner, which can still be felt today, but Harris losing was not. However, this is not 2016. Shall I consult the Swatch around my left wrist?
My bangs cover my eyes. I am wearing Bugle Boy pants and a Generra sweater. The dystopian cyberpunk television show Max Headroom has been canceled and George Michael, Terrence Trent D'Arby and INXS cassettes are burning up my Sony boombox. It is dark. It is late 1980s dark.
Warhol died last year, Basquiat will die of a heroin overdose this
year, Robert Mapplethorpe will die next year and Keith Haring will be dead in two years. AIDS is the cold, misty fog
that glistens on the surfaces of my thoughts. Always there, always dampening the mood and ready to snatch me. The country has had two terms of Reagan and now it is time for a sequel with George H. Bush. The country elected its
nostalgia candidate.
It is 1988.
What is the explanation for this? I suspect there are several reasons, but one of the primary drivers is the cultural changes in the country and not economic anxiety. Generation X has reached a point in life where they believe the past was better than the present. It seems to happen with every generation that nostalgia for youth and rose-colored glasses are handed out with AARP cards.
Baby Boomers before us were served up their nostalgia beginning in the 80s with movies like Dirty Dancing and The Big Chill. Nostalgia is a big seller for advertisers. Now the music from our youth in the 70s, 80s and 90s is the soundtrack to commercials and movies. The present version of an "oldies" radio station is alternative music, including the 90s grunge era. When I was a kid, an oldies station, like say Fox 97 in Atlanta at the time, played music from the 1950s and 60s. 99X in Atlanta, which played new rock in the 90s and plays "classic alternative" today, is the modern version of an oldies station.
Corey Haim in that terrible movie Dream A Little Dream and Molly Ringwald in The Breakfast Club.
The eighties were not a bad time to be
a kid, roaming wild with lax parental supervision,
watching Saturday morning cartoons, playing Atari, hanging out in malls, zoning out
to MTV, school shootings did not exist, a gallon of gas was less than a dollar where I grew up and there was the comfort in knowing that mommy and daddy were going to tuck us into fresh
sheets every night. Generation X felt safe, comfortable and free to
be kids without social media and cell phones logging our every moment
and robbing reality from us. We were the last of a kind that had a childhood where technology had its place but did not consume our every moment. Sure, every so often and for a
second I would not mind being fourteen again, nurturing my severe crush
on Corey Haim or admiring Molly Ringwald in everything, but I do not
want to take the country back to that time.
The eyes of middle-class children did not much see or experience the bad aspects of the 80s under Reagan. Many among my generation, Generation X,
believe without a doubt that Reagan was a great man, a god to worship. I intensely disagree for a plethora of reasons. They believe that because they lived through
the eighties with the perspective of children when mommy and daddy took care of everything. As kids in the 80s, Generation X did not have a care in the world and of course life was
easier. It warped some into having a false sense of security about what the eighties were like. They imagine Reagan wrapped in the red, white and blue as a surrogate
father and they view Trump as a throwback to that era. Trump
captured that powerful drug of nostalgia in them and gave them an overdose. What was the 1980 campaign slogan for Reagan? It was the extremely familiar phrase, "Make America great again."
It is a disputed quote, but it is often attributed to Mark Twain that he said, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes." None of what is happening now is original. The major difference is that my generation is not kids in 2024 and should know better. The consequences are going to be worse than coming home late after curfew. Yet, here we are and where we have been has not been the best either, if we are intellectually honest. Generation X got their nostalgia fix in this election, but governing a country is not the same as organizing a twenty-five-year high school reunion. Who the hell wants to attend one of those anyway or watch Reality Bites ever again?
The gas station scene from Reality Bites in 1994.
Though the gas station scene in Reality Bites is funny. That scene captures so much of the essence of the stupid fun we had without feeling like the world was watching our every move for some accusation of cultural appropriation or a microaggression in which to cancel people. We had the basic freedom of fun. We were an unserious bunch and that was one of our better traits. Political correctness was on the rise in the 90s but it was mostly something argued over on talk shows and in magazines. It was not something that existed in daily life unless it was being mocked.In the strangest twist since, both leftists and conservatives want to police and control speech and ban books.It has become an upside down world where people walk on eggshells and there is such a job in publishing known as a sensitivity reader.
You're right from your side I'm right from mine We're both just one too many mornings And a thousand miles behind. - Bob Dylan 1964
In this deeply divisive era, which has been growing for over the last two decades and coincides with the rise of mass cell phone usage and social media, there are cynical calls for unity, which no one believes as it would require one side to admit it was wrong. Partisans from both sides claim the moral high ground or to be on the right side of history and they can cheer or cry, but it makes no difference to me. I could never trust a Republican having grown up in the times of Reagan, Bush, Jesse Helms and Newt Gingrich. I cannot trust the Democrats either with illiberal ideologues who think a country should not have borders, enforce fundamental laws and want to divide and conquer based on demographics. I have no allegiance to either party. It is country over party for me and not the other way around.
This is a watershed moment in the United States that will transform the cultural and legal landscape for years if not decades to come. Hope is all I have that it will not be as bad as I expect and that maybe there will be a few unintended good consequences from it. It is unfair to blame Generation X for all of this election, as most
every age group and demographic showed gains for Trump. Enough voters
across the spectrum chose him and everything he represents and entails
over Harris. This essay for me was my analysis of what I believe is
going on with my generation. On
second thought, maybe I did write a lengthy political essay. Now I can
be a good consumer and buy a tee shirt or hoodie adorned with the art of
Haring, Basquiat and Warhol.
Somewhere out there in January 1989 I am fifteen years old. I am walking
down the sidewalk in Midtown Atlanta on my way to the Fox Theater to
see Duran Duran's Big Thing tour with a friend. It will be my first concert. It will be a special moment in the darkness, like a searchlight through the fog. Thirty-five years later, I will have kept going and will again look for that light. It is what can be done. Or, as Warhol would have done, one could pop a Valium and go back to sleep.
David Wojnarowicz . Gay artist and activist. Died in 1992 of AIDS.
After wandering through an antique show in Atlanta on Saturday for what seemed like hours and not buying anything, we drifted out to Athens and were glad to be away from the crowds. We listened to the Lemonheads album Car Button Cloth as our soundtrack and bummed around.
The other half said that he would be happy to live in the country, "as long as we had a pool."
I was a little surprised he said it, but not entirely. Our house is sort of in the middle ground between Atlanta and Athens, but both us would be okay living closer to Athens than to the other. The landscape has not been entirely chewed up and spit out as exurbs yet between the two cities and there is still some countryside left for pools and happiness. Since leaving Atlanta over three years ago, our lives have gravitated more and more toward to Athens.
We stopped in a bookstore. In the entrance was a table loaded down with the new biography of R.E.M., The Name of This Band is R.E.M.. This is Athens after all and I should have not been surprised, but I did not know there was a new biography on the band. I was intrigued despite the terrible title. They are my all-time favorite band, but is another book about them really needed? Don't we know everything already and they retired long ago. I did like the orange cover. I flipped through it, placed it back on the table and went to look at photography and art books. I'll read it some other time.
Photo by me, November 2024.
It was either the R.E.M. influence or the craving for fried chicken that put us outside Weaver D's. It was closed early and the craving was denied. The last two times we have been there they were closed early. There was nothing fine about that and the disappointment was automatic. The place has always been a little strange and having irregular hours is an odd way to run a business, but they do have good fried chicken. The whole thing is very Athens - strange and somehow excusable.
Photo by me, November 2024.
The college students went to the bars in shorts. The Dawgs were playing in Mississippi somewhere and that I was all I cared to know. It was another climate change November day with temperatures in the middle seventies. Some other time it might get cold again, but in Athens everything operates on its own time and may that never change.
