Unrelated Thoughts

I don't think I have enough to say on any one topic for a coherent blog entry, so I've decided to cheat and put together a list of topics with some thoughts about each.  Each of them has been bumping around in my head for awhile, so I may as well clear the decks and get ready for truly substantive stuff.

--  Manliness is defined by many different people in many different ways.  As such, there is no specific definition of what true virility or masculinity is.  But it occurred to me that insofar as I'm concerned, I don't really share a lot of the more masculine traits other men who are regarded as truly manly have.  I don't smoke cigars, I don't play poker.  I couldn't care less about cars, makes, models and their engine sizes.  I don't drink beer all the time or drink shots.  I don't like The Three Stooges and never have.  Movies like Ted or Point Break or the Fast and Furious franchises are imponderable to me.  I can't rebuild engines or repair small engines.  I can't locate an alternator much less tell you what it does.  I've never hunted or fished.

Does this make me less masculine?

I say thank you ma'am and open doors for women and the elderly.  I read books and am fluent in Spanish.  I chop firewood and now own a rifle, although I expect to buy more weapons.  Rain doesn't bother me, nor does snow.  I can cook or I can eat of a can. 

By my own measure I'm masculine.  That's all that matters to me.

--  This has been a bad year to be a musician.  So far -- and we're only at April 6 -- the following musicians have died:  David Bowie, Gavin Christopher, Joey Feek, Andrew Loomis, Ray Griff, Conor Walsh, Merle Haggard, Tommy Brown, Daryl Coley, Frank Sinatra, Jr., Lee Andrews, Scabs, Jimmy Riley, Roger Cicero, Gato Barbieri, Long John Hunter, Nicholas Caldwell, Signe Toly Anderson, Paul Kantner, Maurice White, Paul Gordon, Lennie Baker and Lemmy Kilmister.

I haven't heard of many of the above names.  I had to search online to find most of them.  People were all upset about Lemmy Kilmister's death, but I'd never heard of him. 

Even so, it does seem to be a weird year for musicians' deaths.  Usually, they say that celebrities die in groups of three.  We're only at the beginning of April and some pretty huge names in the music industry have died (insert Kanye West joke here).

Musicians, however, are different than actors in that they don't actively seek the spotlight.  Sure, a few do, but the vast majority of them don't.  When someone like Mr. Kilmister dies and there is such an outpouring of grief, that means more because the people who follow those musicians usually are moved more by their artwork than by their celebrity.

--  When does the nostalgic become the ancient?  Well, perhaps not ancient, but the old.  I got to wondering about this when CNN announced it was airing a show on the 80's.  I lived through the 80's -- OK, I mostly studied through that decade -- but I remember a lot of that period quite well.  It's nearly thirty years ago, but I remember it as if it were yesterday.  For me, it's not nostalgic...yet. 

For me, the 50's are nostalgic, simply because I didn't live through them.  I was born in 1961, so the 50's are nothing more than other people's memories foisted on me with a patina of longing.  What they represent to those people strikes a chord with me, although not nearly as resonant a one as the 80's, for the simple fact that I didn't live through them.

Yet for many people now, the 50's are no longer nostalgic, having been replaced by the 60's and the 70's.  Sure, baby-boomers may well recall the 50's fondly, but Gen-Xers and millenials have no such fondness for that period.  Instead, to them the 50's are ancient history or what to me are the 20's, the 30's and the 40's. 

After a certain point, people with actual memories die away and the next generation, who may have been influenced by the people with actual memories, sustain the nostalgia for that period.  But when they die, does that signal the end of nostalgia?  Or are there people out there who were born in the 70's or later who actually look at the 50's with nostalgia?

(c) 2016 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles