I watch old movies and read old books.  It’s not that I don’t like new movies and new books.  I do.  I enjoy them occasionally.  It’s not the same though.  I like books and movies from the late forties to early seventies.  Somehow there’s more energy in them, more exuberance.  That’s how it seems to me.  Back then, actors would break out into a spontaneous song.  I know some of you younger folks might not understand this, so I’ll explain it.  Sometimes in an old movie the events that are unfolding are so dramatic, or so joyous, that the actor will have to stop and sing a song.  I know.  It’s shocking.  Yep, just stop and  sing a song.  I know you think it’s stupid but how many times in your life have you felt so good or so bad that you had to stop and sing?  I’ve done it numerous times.  Now granted, the people or animals around me didn’t come in on the chorus, but nonetheless, I did stop and sing.  Just the other day I had a particularly bad time and I broke into the “doom, despair, and agony on me” song from Hee Haw.  I don’t know if your “rap” music is good for this, but you can always borrow from us.  It’s not just the singing either.  Man, in the old movies when someone has had a particularly good time they will break out into a dance.  I don’t mean the over-choreographed things you have in your movies.  I mean a real get-after-it dance.  Some actor will start stomping his feet a hundred miles an hour and making this tapping sound.  It’s crazy if you ever see it.  Those movies are full of happy action even when the action is sad.  That’s why I like them. 

      I particularly like a group of writers from this period.  I really like Jack Kerouac and Kurt Vonnetgut as well as numerous others.  For these guys, the world seemed a little fresher.  Everything was changing quickly.  Questions were being asked.  A lot of these writers went about trying to answer them or at least explore the various answers.  When I read these books I feel their brazeness.  Their wide-eyed approach to looking at the world.  I guess it’s because their world had changed so quickly after WWII and it was pretty new-looking to them.  Think of how Jazz, Blues, and Rock and Roll have changed forever how human beings think of music.  It’s got to be that newness.  That has to be where that vibe comes from.  That energenic vibe.  I think that’s why we seem a little drab these days.  Even though there has been huge technological changes since the seventies and some social changes, the eighties until now have been a lot of the same old stuff.  I’m not saying a lot of it isn’t good.  It is.  Still, it seems like the same old stuff.  If some girls are screaming and passing out over some singer or band you can bet they are paid actors or it’s the socially acceptable and calcuated thing to do.  It isn’t spontaneous.  There hasn’t been anything really big and new happen since then.  I mean, who has had an Elvis type situation, since Elvis.  Just about everybody has the same rights now as everyone else excluding the gay folks of course, but they’re working on it.  Maybe the next big thing will be a gay Elvis type situation.  A super-star from somewhere no one  has ever heard of that can sing and dance in a new special way that he stole from the poor native peoples that raised him and bench press five hundred pounds while reciting the declaration of independence and be way gay and then become president.  That would be exciting.  Things would be exciting.  There would be spontaneous dancing and singing all the time.  The state of the union address would be a big production with congressman dancing in unison and the president floating down to the podium on a wire wearing  black tights.  That’s exciting and new.  I don’t think I’m ready for it.  I really don’t think I’m  ready for it.