Heart and Mind

The Clock Keeps Ticking

I call it the "Very Brady Christmas Syndrome." It's when something that celebrates a bygone era from yesteryear becomes old and dated in an of itself.

In the past, I've talked about "A Very Brady Christmas" here on the blog. In December 1988, there was this made for TV special with the grown up Brady cast, and, naturally, a major part of the charm of it all was that it was completely modern and not like the Brady Bunch at all. Clearly, the Brady Bunch, with the tacky clothing and hair styles of the later seasons, is a concept that is entirely associated with the decade of the 1970s. But in 1988, we all watched it and we dug how the Brady-world looked completely modern. No bell-bottoms or plaid pants or Brady hair. And the kids weren't kids anymore. They were adults. And Mike and Carol looked grandparently.

In the world of Brady fandom, "A Very Brady Christmas" was the "new school" thing. But now we look back and...guess what? The new school thing is now over 20 years old! So everything looks ridiculously dated. The styles appear tacky again and... oh, my! Those grown up kids who looked so old at the time now look so young! Everyone in the cast does, except for Robert Reed, who didn't live much longer so we don't have any older version to compare to.

It's really no surprise, logically speaking. After all, "A Very Brady Christmas" was so long ago that it's quite a bit closer in time-period to the actual original Brady series (which had ended 14-years earlier) than it is to the present. But logic aside, it seems strange that the thing we though of as the "modern version" has become completely ancient.

It's because with nostalgia, when enough time has past that we can stop and be nostalgic, we somehow cease to think about the fact that the clock is actually still ticking.

Another example: earlier tonight, the 1995 "Beatles Anthology" TV special was being aired again on VH1 Classic. The Beatles, 100% a 1960s thing. I remember watching that 1995 TV special when it came out. I was in a band at the time where everyone in the group was a big Beatles fan, and we watched it together. And I remember thinking at the time about not only how the whole Beatle-trip was a million years ago, but about how it felt like we were almost living in the future. I was a child from the 1980s, so my peak days as a culturally relevant, youthful person had passed and I was now subconsciously feeling like everything that was happening now was "after." After what? Well, that's just it... nothing in particular, it was just a feeling. It—whatever "it" was—was done and we were now living in a non-classic era, from a personal standpoint, from the stand point of someone who was a child in the 1970s and grew up as a teen in the 1980s. The 1990s were after the fact. I still sort of feel like that, although I recognize 100% that it is a viewpoint that's entirely subjective and based on the time I was born.

At any rate, what a surprise it was to see that Beatles Anthology and see how ridiculously young Paul and Ringo looked compared to what they look like now, 14-years older. And George looked young, too, and, most significantly, he was alive.

But what's really interesting is that no matter how much I am aware of this phenomenon that "the clock doesn't stop ticking just because you stop to reflect on something old," my knee-jerk reaction is to think it does before my intellectual point-of-view overrides my first cognition. I can give you an example, which also happened today. I'm less than two weeks away from attending my 20-year high school reunion, and, although I don't think I'm a particularly vain person in terms of appearances, I think it's natural that everyone would, to at least a small degree, like to hope that people from their past that they haven't seen in years won't think they've aged horribly. So I was thinking about that, and I saw some pictures of myself and came to the opinion that I have aged particularly in the last five or so years. It's the idea that 33 to 37 were more taxing on my youthful appearance than 29 to 33 were. Which makes sense. But what's funny is that I caught myself thinking, "It's too bad this reunion wasn't five years ago, because I probably wouldn't have looked as 'old for my age' as I think I do now." And that kind of thinking is exactly what I'm talking about: for that brief moment, I seem to act as though I'm not going to (if things go well) someday turn 40 and 45 and 50 and 60.... and just keep looking older. It's all the perspective. Someday, the concept of me in 2009—in terms of what I look like and how I think and what I do—will seem comparatively youthful. It just keeps on ticking.

posted by Steve @ 9:44 PM