Feeling Gravity's Pull

Amazing “To The Best Of Our Knowledge” ( www.ttbook.org ) about what they call the “We Generation”-social media and online culture. One of the segments was about www.wefeelfine.org, which apparently gathers sentences that contain the verb “feel” from English language blogs around the world, thus indexing, in a sense, how we feel.
Or something like that.

It mostly makes me feel old. I am finally starting to feel like the world is passing me by, that my generation, whoever that is, is handing over the reins to people younger than I. I have a terrible ability to judge ages based on appearance, and I find myself regularly encountering very successful people-certainly more successful than I-who are younger, and at times quite a bit younger, much smarter and better looking-than I am. I can’t call them my peer group any more.

I don’t feel good about this. I was never Mr. Zeitgeist, exactly, but I used to think I had a handle on things culturally. I don’t know who anyone is anymore, or what the running jokes are, or what anything is. I feel obsolescent.

There is a natural reaction to this, I think-the kids saying, “get out of the way, old man.” It’s an intimation of mortality. I feel like I have something to contribute, but I can do the math, and I’m starting to see that I won’t. There was a beautiful passage I read to that effect somewhere-when you reach the age when you realize you’re never going to write that book.

I guess they might as well run the world, because we didn’t exactly do a bang up job of it. As Kurt Vonnegut wrote, my message to the future is that I’m very sorry.

***

It’s Father’s Day.

I, of course, like a lot of people, am a father and have a father. One of the cards I bought this year says “You know why Father’s Day is in June? A month after Mother’s Day, someone said, ‘hey, wait a minute…’”. I think that’s a greeting card, but I also think that it is true to some extent. Father’s Day feels a little tacked on, like a lot of holidays these days. In my narrow, solipsistic view, any day that I have to work isn’t a real holiday, of course.

I feel like a fraud on Father’s Day. I am one, of course. (Unless my wife has some explaining to do.) As my son gets older, I bleed with sympathy over what my father went through-young teenagers are impossible, and I know full well it’s not going to get better anytime soon. I really understand more than ever how hard parenthood is, and any errors my parents made are utterly forgiven.

It’s a terribly unfair thing to say, because the truth of a statement does not depend on the reputation of the speaker, but I really am starting to think that non parents have no right to enter into this discussion. I thought I knew, too-but you don’t know, until you have children. You really don’t know anything about it.

I see some of my less than desirable qualities in my own son, and I just want to apologize to both of them, my son and my father, over and over again. I don’t feel worthy of even this half baked fraud of a holiday.

I won’t, of course. We’re men. Northeastern Yankees (in the “person from the Northeast” sense, not the “baseball team from the Bronx” sense-just to be clear), at that. We don’t do that. It isn’t done.

***

The Slate Audio Book Club discussed John Cheever’s “The Swimmer” and Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard To Find”, which, I think, is a first for them-discussing short stories instead of novels. (The motivating factor seems to be new biographies of each coming out recently.) It’s nice to hear smart people talking about smart things.

I bought the big Cheever book of short stories, the one with the red cover, along with a volume of his diaries, in college. I enjoyed them, but I don’t think I finished the book of stories. I have it somewhere still, I’m pretty sure. I don’t think I own any O’Connor, except maybe in a collection. I took a short story course in college, and I have to assume O’Connor was in there. I remember writing a paper on John Updike’s “A + P” in that class, and the teacher was impressed that I went outside the assigned reading.

I think the Cheever biography may be worth reading. Maybe I should get out some O’Connor the next time I go to the library, too.

***

“Oh, darling-
When you told me-
You didn’t need me anymore-
Well you know, I nearly broke down and died-“

-The Beatles,
“Oh! Darling”

Someone knows what I mean by that.

***

I finally discovered what “Shuffle Albums” means on my IPod. Apparently it does just that-finds a new album, then plays the whole thing. I don’t know what I thought it did, but I think I like this better than “Shuffle Songs”. First was “Abbey Road”, because it is first alphabetically, and the first thing I click on after choosing the Safe For Work playlist is usually “Come Together”, now it is Elton John’s “Duets”.

That, of course, has the George Michael/Elton version of “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down on Me,” which has been included on a number of albums. I could care less, though-I think it’s gorgeous, even not being necessarily a George Michael fan. I used to date someone who was, back in the day. Which, as regular readers will know, and as Dane Cook taught us all, was a Wednesday.

Now it’s Elton’s “The One”, which tells me I must have deleted several tracks from “Duets”, since I know it was longer than 3 songs. I’ll have to go investigate that. Maybe I was too hard on some of those songs. I believe this has “Runaway Train,” which is a favorite of mine. I used to work at a place where the muzak was so cool, that song would play.

***

“Trying to get a grip on my life again-
I feel it’s harder than a runaway train-“

Elton John
“Runaway Train”


…followed by an Eric Clapton guitar solo that sounds like an Eric Clapton guitar solo always sounds. What a gorgeous song.

***

Now it’s REM’s “And I Feel Fine”, the “More Greatest Hits” collection from the first part of their career.

“Not-
Everyone-
Can Carry The Weight of The World”

-REM, “Talk About The Passion”

Somebody also knows what that means. Or they should.

***

Now it’s “The Best of The Talking Heads”.

My physiology teacher in college was a Talking Heads fan. In unrelated news, I had a crush on her.
***