I've gone to a few end-of-year get-togethers the last few days -- you couldn't really call them parties, everyone is so subdued. The events of this year have been so dismaying that no one is in a party mood. What's to celebrate?
I've hosted or helped host these events and my contribution is to focus on what our country used to be, showing old movies and old TV shows, playing old pop tunes, especially those sweet romantic songs that I am a sucker for. One of my all-time favorite movies is the 1948 Portrait of Jenny and I showed it with some trepidation at one of our gatherings, filled as it was with mostly Macho McStudly types, many combat vets who are cynical about everything, but they all watched it with intense interest. I even noticed a tear in the eye of one or two of these gentlemen. I really do think that a lot of guys are very romantic at heart, but they've learned to keep such feelings well hidden. One person, watching the scenes of New York City life at mid-20th century, remarked on how wonderful it must have been to have a life in that city in those days. He said he wished the present would just go away and heads nodded and some sighs were heard. If only there was some button to push, some magic word or phrase to say, to make the last 60 or so years to never have been.... And let me emphasize that all those present are millennials, not old-timers. All of us yearn for a past we never knew, one that even our parents knew scarcely, if at all. In Nabokov's words, we weep for the impossible past.
The music I play has a similar effect as I select mainly sentimental slow dances, romantic songs from an era when love and romance were paramount in popular culture. Even the clumsy, suddenly shy guys discover just how great it is to dance cheek-to-cheek with your girl. Then settle down together by the fireside and have a hot toddy as the wind sings around the eaves and the rain and sleet beat against the windows and snow flurries dance in the porch light. Life would be so good if only the present would just go away!
