The Lure of Living in the Past

Even if nostalgia isn’t your thing, you might be hard-pressed to escape it in the 21st Century. Susanna Schrobsdorff writes in this week’s TIME Magazine that living in the past is not only easier than ever now that our lives and so much pop culture have become digitized, it’s practically impossible to escape. Our last ten years have been better documented than any other decade, archived with countless digitized photos, videos, blog entries, emails, texts, and Facebook and Twitter comments.  Schrobsdorff writes:

“All that evidence of what we really said (in the past) messes with the version of ourselves we’ve created.” 

After all, if you've managed over time to smooth out your rough edges, you might not be so keen on dredging up your formal self. I cringe when I think of the worst episodes of my past, and if those moments had been documented and broadcasted over the Internet, I wouldn’t be able to get up in the morning. Today’s generation gets no such slack. Those who participate in social media and other digitized forms of communication may never be able to escape their pasts, no matter how hard they try. 

For many, nostalgia is a comfort, a pleasant way to revisit the better moments of our lives. At a Super Bowl party last Sunday I admitted to a few friends that I’d recently rewatched a DVD of Super Bowl XXXI (Guess what? The Packers won!), and while I was initially made fun of for living in my Packer Past, my friends soon confessed that they’d relished the recent news stories commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Bears’ Super Bowl victory. Nostalgia can be fun. It’s why we reread books, rewatch movies, listen to old records, collect items from long ago, thumb through yearbooks and photo albums, read history and tell stories. It’s also why people are shelling out $80 to see the upcoming Carol Burnett tour (I’m one of them!), why Antiques Roadshow and Ken Burns are PBS mainstays, and why WDCB in suburban Chicago broadcasts old radio shows every Saturday on “Those Were the Days.”  

Nostalgia can also be a bit dangerous. Mae West popularized the quote, “Keep a diary and someday it’ll keep you,” and I’ve thought of this often as I go through boxes of old letters, yearbooks and tickets stubs, edit family videos and rearrange my vinyl.  I could spend the second half of my life doing little more than reliving various moments from the first half of my life. I’ve always been a nostalgic guy, and I’ve met others who share the same sensibility, the kind of people Ben Folds makes fun of in his song “Bastard.” (“You get nostalgic about the last ten years before the last ten years have passed.”)

But at the same time, I admire those who have no interest in revisiting yesterday’s playground: guys like Woody Allen, who’s career code is to work and continue to work, never looking back to watch his films once they’ve been completed; Peter Gabriel who’s refused to do a Genesis reunion; Tom Trebelhorn, the former Milwaukee Brewers manager, who once quipped (I’m paraphrasing here, but I believe it came from Milwaukee Magazine, July 1987, Volume 12, Number 7) that cemeteries should be bulldozed into golf courses. There’s something freeing about moving on to the next big adventure and eschewing the past. It’s what allows humanity to progress. But the sort of person who wishes to look to the future might have a tough time living today. Like Jimmy Buffett’s pirate, he may have been born too late.

For the rest of us, we might need to work a little harder at balancing our lives, substituting the comfort of yesterday for the unknown, resisting the lure of living in the past, or else – as Schrobsdorff aptly puts – at some point our past “…becomes a memory of remembering.”

A Matter of Perspective

In Atul Gawande’s essential read about end-of-life healthcare in the United States, Being Mortal, he cites a remarkable study conducted by Stanford psychologist Laura Carstensen that tracked people’s emotions as they age. Initial findings showed that people become happier as they grow older, but further analysis concluded that it wasn’t age per se that caused people to be more emotionally at ease, but rather perspective. Those who sensed that they still had decades left to live tended to desire things consistent with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: self-fulfillment, achievements, success. Those who sensed that their time left was short desired everyday pleasures and emotional connections to loved ones. Age didn’t matter as much as perspective did. A twenty-something with a chronic illness had similar emotional desires to that of an octogenarian.

Now, I don’t plan on checking out of Planet Earth anytime soon, but my recent experience with foot surgery has me wondering if Carstensen’s studies might be applicable not only to people’s perspectives on mortality, but to their perspectives on their quality of life.

When I was a teenage, I remember watching the adults around me working their asses off on the weekends and thinking, “If I ever consider cutting the lawn and doing the laundry accomplishments, shoot me.” I had big dreams, baby. Who were these schmucks finding fulfillment by doing household chores? There was an older couple who lived a few blocks from my house who spent hours toiling in their yard on their hands and knees, pulling weeds, and the contempt I felt for these people was palpable. 

Well, today I raise my hand and say with humility: I would be a happy camper if I could spend a few hours today pulling weeds. Yes, it’s come to that.

For the past week I’ve had limited mobility, and while I recognize that my minor ailment is not a big deal, still I find myself longing for very simple pleasures. The first few days after surgery were rough, and I would have paid someone handsomely for the ability to, say, walk to the bathroom pain-free. When the worst of the pain was over and I was able to walk more freely, I was happy to just get out of the house. Two days ago, I made a short trip to buy groceries at Jewel, and for me that was a BANNER DAY.  Today I wish for two things: the ability to partake in a little cardiovascular exercise (something I would normally not be longing for), and a long, hot shower, but I’m still a week away from the first and two weeks away from the second, so I’ll have to settle for playing a little piano and maybe making a Target run. Woo hoo!

I suspect there have been studies much like Carstensen’s that focus on people who’ve had the misfortune of enduring chronic pain or long-term illnesses that have compromised their way of living, and I imagine that people in these positions desire the same things that people whose time is short do: simple pleasures of enjoying the day and being with friends and family.

Both long-term and short-term perspectives are important. As a society we need people who think big and strive to achieve great things. We also need wise people who are nurturing and at ease. Luckily, most of us will get to experience both perspectives in a lifetime, and we might even teeter back and forth between the two, giving us fresh perspectives that allow us to live balanced lives.

For now, I’m going to take what’s available to me: I’m going to nap with my puppy. Not as fulfilling as a hot shower, but not too shabby.

A Touch of Guilt: Music and Guilty Pleasures

Anyone who has relatives probably knows that although guilt is an emotion we feel internally, it can be externally induced. Guilty pleasures are no different. We might feel self-conscious about liking a song because we’re afraid of what other people might think or because they’ve already shared their opinions. I remember my poor junior-high classmate, Andy, who let it be known that he liked the group Abba. Boy, did we set him straight and make him wish that both he and Frida had never been born.  In hindsight, Andy was right – Abba has its merits – but it was a catastrophic failure of self-awareness to divulge his taste to a bunch of ignorant 13 year-olds.

I thought of Andy last month when my friends and I trudged through the theme of Guilty Pleasures during our regular album night in suburban Milwaukee. I’ve found that guilty pleasures change depending on who you’re with and correlate inversely to one’s age.  Today I have no problem at all admitting to my friends that I like the song “Mandy” by Barry Manilow, but back in high school?  Forgetaboutit! 

I approached the theme this way: a guilty pleasure is a song that I wouldn’t play on the jukebox in a biker bar.  That seemed to open the theme up a bit!

Here’s my list from that evening (and the list could go on and on):

Invisible Tough, Genesis

Girls Chase Boys, Ingrid Michaelson

The Name of the Game, Abba (thanks Andy!)

Without You, Harry Nilsson (this was written by Badfinger, so naturally it didn’t become a hit until later)

Our Lips Are Sealed, The Go-Go’s

Rainy Days and Mondays, The Carpenters

Tubthumping, Chumbawamba

If You Could Read My Mind, Gordon Lightfoot (fun fact: Lightfoot sued the composer Michael Masser for the Whitey Houston hit “The Greatest Love of All,” which shamelessly stole from the B section of Lightfoot’s song.  I understand the case was settled though I’ve been unable to find specifics on-line.)

Unwritten, Natasha Beddingfield

The Middle, Jimmy Eat World

Let’s Talk About Me, The Alan Parsons Project

Walking On Broken Glass, Annie Lennox

Even Now, Barry Manilow (I’d have played “Mandy” if I owned it!)

Too Late, Journey (This band has made a comeback to give them an air of legitimacy, but try admitting to liking them back in the 90s – it was tough.)

Add to this list the multiple show tunes I could have played (Fiddler on the Roof songs, anyone?), campy songs by Ella Fitzgerald (“A-Tisket, A-Tasket”), a song from the Brady Bunch (“When It’s Time to Change”?  That song rules!), songs by Burt Bacharach, Paul Williams and Marvin Hamlisch, and virtually every song written by Alan Menken (except “Beauty and the Beast” – I could kill him for that one).  Plus the entire James Taylor repertoire, Carol King, Sara Bareilles, many of the old Motown girl group hits, ballads by Ben Folds, yada yada yada.

Which begs the question: after all of this, what would be left to play in a biker bar? Not much, I’m afraid, except for classic rock and a few songs by The Replacements. I prefer the songs that induce just a touch of guilt.

Review: I Smile Back

After watching a free screening of Sarah Silverman’s film, I Smile Back, I tried to think of other movies that made me feel as miserable as this one did. I’m sure there are dozens, but the two that immediately came to mine are A House of Sand and Fog and Revolution Road. For me, those films, while being completely depressing (and in the case of A House of Sand and Fog, a waste of much-needed time together for my wife and me as we wrestled with having three children under the age of six), at least had some compelling elements: A House of Sand and Fog offered an interesting glimpse into the life of an Iranian immigrant (plus it had Ben Kingsley and Jennifer Connelly); Revolution Road gave an honest portrayal of the life of a 1950s housewife who isn’t ready to sacrifice her dreams (a topic I find fascinating, plus it had Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio). 

Unfortunately, I Smile Back is stuck in the hidden suburban drug culture, a topic I find excruciatingly boring. (Wasn't it already passe in 1966 with The Rolling Stones's "Mother's Little Helper"?) Twenty minutes into the film I found myself antsy with Silverman’s portrayal of a housewife who sinks into episodes of dangerous drug use and its byproducts. Silverman is very good, as is the supporting cast (including Josh Charles of The Good Wife and – one of my favorite shows of all-time – Sports Night), but the story itself is lacking. My friend Terry was more forgiving, but for me the film was predictable and all-too familiar. Yes, drugs are bad. They make you do bad things. They tear families apart. So what? What on Earth is this movie bringing to the forefront that hasn’t been done a thousand times before and a thousand times better?

And maybe that’s the problem. While a movie like Goodfellas is a gangster movie with a drug element, I Smile Back goes all in with the drugs with no interesting side story to supplement the main theme.

Afterward Terry and I discussed the film briefly while in the theater bathroom when a man asked us, “Did you just see that Smile movie?”

“Yep.”

“Man, that was dark!”

You betcha! And look, I’m okay with dark films that have something interesting to say (Buried, for instance), but I Smile Back is trudging up familiar territory. Despite the wonderful performances, there’s no way I could recommend this movie to a friend.  At some point you're taking someone's free time and choosing to shit on it. That's what this film does.

The Big Short and Being Human

Back in the late 80s when I attended UW-Madison, I had a conversation with a fellow student and expressed my opinion that the way we value a nation’s economy is going to have to change – that we can’t continue to measure economic growth largely by how much of its natural resources we’re expending. In essence, I argued that the entire world economy is a one giant Ponzi scheme (though I didn’t know the term Ponzi scheme until Bernie Madoff entered the picture). I still believe this to be the case. After all, a stock’s price is supposedly the present value of all future earnings, but we know that most companies that exist today will one day disappear and be sold for peanuts (Pan Am, Blockbuster, Enron, Woolworths, Tower Records), and the present value of a string of zeros is zero, so we’re really betting on short-term earnings. Even Amazon founder Jeff Bezos who has a rare long view when it comes to business success recognizes that his company will one day be disrupted and perhaps no longer exist (watch 13:20 of this 60 Minutes video).

It’s one thing to have this viewpoint about a system that’s largely on the up and up: that’s run by smart people with good intentions but who sometimes fall short or make mistakes. It’s quite another to discover that the people driving our economy are incompetent, greedy, short-sighted, ruthless criminals. If you’ve seen The Big Short or read the Michael Lewis book upon which the film is based, you’ll likely spend some time rethinking your investment strategy. After all, does it make sense to invest your retirement savings in corporations run by buffoons? The answer: what choice do you have? If you could earn 5% guaranteed in CDs you might do so, but you can’t, so if you’re like me you’ll throw the dice and hope that the pyramid scheme of the U.S. economy can hang in there for a little while longer.

I tried reading The Big Short a few years ago and had some difficulty. It does get complicated. But having a visual helps me enormously, and the film’s director Adam McKay (of Anchorman fame) does a marvelous job of acknowledging the complexity of the movie’s subject while helping the audience along the way. I still left the movie with a few lingering questions (that I hope to answer by giving the book another shot), but generally felt more informed than when I arrived, while still being entertained in between. 

No small feat.

Michael Lewis has a terrific piece in the week’s Vanity Fair that describes the minor miracle that any of his books have been made into movies (and successful ones at that: Moneyball, The Blind Side), least of all a film about credit-default swaps and collateralized debt obligations. You’ll also learn what you likely already knew: that incompetence and greed are as prevalent in Hollywood as they are on Wall Street. 

If only it ended there. But it doesn’t matter whether it’s Wall Street, Hollywood, government agencies, the Chicago police force, horny priests, Oregon ranchers or religious zealots: we as humans seem to be preprogrammed to abuse power, blur the lines between right and wrong, desire more even when we have enough, sacrifice long-term benefits for short-term gains, and hurt people for our own benefit. So why is it when we read about our brethren behaving badly we feel smug about it and think we would never fall into the same trap despite history telling us otherwise?

There are different schools of thought here. My own viewpoint is that religion – for all its faults – helps ground us in humility and gratitude, two essential ingredients to keep from following our worst instincts. Perhaps the people running our biggest firms would do well to spend more time in the pews or our nation’s religious institutions and less in the office.

But then how do you explain the clergy sex abuse scandal? Yeah, that's tricky. After you see The Big Short go watch the marvelous film Spotlight and then tell me your faith in mankind hasn’t been just a wee bit shaken.