Autism and Excessive Screen Use

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Lately, with the rise in autism in children in our society, all manner of reasons have been given as to why this is occurring, from the use of vaccines, pollution, toxic chemicals, and viral infections that occur during pregnancy. or even children being born to parents who are older. Of course, with the nomination of known anti-vaxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be the new head of Health and Human Services, the possible relationship between the vaccinations of young children and the potential development of autism in them has once again being given what would appear to be an inordinate amount of attention, although to date there has been no well-known scientific evidence linking those two things.

Autistic children invariably often have trouble taking in and understanding social or verbal cues coming from others, or generally speaking, in adapting to the specifics of the particular social environment which they share with other children. In particular, they have difficulty reading non-verbal cues from others, and so often tend to remain isolated within themselves. Therefore, because these are all significant developmental issues related to one’s ability to attend, it seems possible that autism might in fact be a potential developmental malady related to a unique form of attention deficit disorder.

In addition, it seems to be more than a little possible that autistic children might be prone to developing this type of attention disorder simply because we now live in a culture in which a potentially distracted awareness is being engendered in many of us by our compulsive use of digital devices. Therefore, it likewise seems possible that within such a culture, because the autistic child is endeavoring to relate to others whose capacity to attend is already significantly compromised, his own ability to relate to the social or verbal cues he receives from them might also become compromised. Therefore, this might then become a pattern which engenders an inability to relate.

It has now become a well-known fact, if not an absolute truism that has become part of our cultural landscape, that the amount of time which people spend with their digital devices, and the Internet itself, have engendered what can only be described as a permanent state of distracted awareness in many of us as we jump relentlessly between websites, text messages, and e-mails, with it even being articulated by any number of cognitive theorists and psychologists that our current Internet addiction has even released certain chemicals into our brains, such as dopamine, which threaten to make our addiction not just psychological, but even physical.

Therefore, it would appear that, relative to the recent growth of autism among children in our current age. the question which might need to be asked is what part a distracted awareness engendered by people’s use of digital tools might play in creating conditions in the lives of young children which might actually be responsible for engendering an autistic mind-set and autistic behavior, particularly in terms of a child’s interactions with those whom he or she relates closely who spend a great deal of time in the digital world? In other words, this might in fact be a different type of developmental issue which needs to be studied relative to childhood autism.

To this date, autism in children has been looked at almost entirely in terms of medical issues such as viral infections during pregnancy, environmental issues such as exposure to toxic chemicals, or genetic issues such as aging parents who have children. Yet it might appear to be entirely possible that autism is in part a result of developmental issues such as the nature of a child’s personal interactions and the potential effect of those on the type of distracted awareness which is unique to autism. In a digital age in which the possible effects on all of us which our use of digital devices and the Internet may be engendering in us, this might be something which might require a certain degree of our attention.

The Spiritual Side of DNA

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Recently, it was revealed that scientists are studying the possibility of what they describe as a mirror cell which could be used to create a microbe that could duplicate the properties of DNA, only as a left-handed structure which is the reverse of the right-handed molecules and the left-handed proteins which are inevitably part of DNA’s basic structure and function; meaning, it would appear, that an alternative, reverse form of DNA and the proteins it uses to engender various life forms might actually be created in a laboratory somewhere.

This of course would mean that a whole other form of evolution might proceed from the creation of a mirror cell; one in which the inevitable evolutionary processes of DNA might be able to systematically proceed as an alternative Tree of Life, so to speak; something which a number of scientists, particularly synthetic biologists, find exciting because of the possibilities inherent in such an occurrence, such as the creation of bigger, more powerful proteins which might become extremely valuable to medical science and its procedures.

However, there are concerns among biologists who have studied the risks inherent in mirror cells, such as what would happen if a mirror cell escaped containment, and in doing so caused a world-wide catastrophe, such as a pandemic which couldn’t be stopped simply because either our bodies couldn’t build up the proper immunity to this strange pathogen, or else the biotechnology which exists at the time couldn’t put an end to it once it began, or if a mirror cell escaped from a lab or else was set free to attack people as a new biological weapon.

Yet, at the same time, there may be something even larger and more profound to consider, which is that DNA is the polestar of a process of evolution which is deeply spiritual in nature. That is, there is an intrinsic, one might even say otherworldly intelligence for how this incredible molecule evolved over time into a species (i.e. we humans) who have now developed both the intelligence and the technology to actually decode it at the smallest possible level; with the human species evolving, along with those of plants and other animals, at the exact moments in time in which planet earth had itself evolved to the point where those species were able to flourish.

If there is an incredible intelligence at work in the universe (not something religious directed by some imagined deity, but an intrinsic intelligence inside of things), one that we ourselves as humans are a part of, it seems hard to visualize a better example of this intrinsic intelligence than the evolutionary process itself. Therefore, because DNA is at the very essence of this process, there is indeed something which might be called spiritual (not religious but spiritual) about the molecule itself; one which because of its intrinsic, one might even say otherworldly nature we should probably not be trying to alter or change in any way.

There are indeed some things on our planet, in our universe, and inside ourselves which should be left alone simply because they likewise may be part of an intrinsic intelligence. To try to change these elemental processes in any way might indeed disturb a universal order which may be part of such a larger intelligence. That is, there may be occasions where the metaphysical is even more important than scientific discovery and progress. This may be one of those times.

 

The Death of Irony in the Digital Age

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It was in 1964 that Susan Sontag wrote her notorious essay Notes on Camp, something which along with her provocative piece Against Interpretation rocketed her into the center of American society in a manner which effectively fused the worlds of high-brow literary culture with the sparks of streetwise ethos which at the time had begun to smolder in Andy Warhol’s legendary Silver Factory.

The description of camp provided by Sontag in Notes on Camp was essentially a list of the elements of a culture in reaction to typical bourgeois society, something in which Sontag herself was in rebellion at the time. Only the descriptions provided were deeply ironical in the sense that they were to be taken as satirical representations of various elements of American society rather than as things in and of themselves.

Camp was a means of embracing certain things while at the same time keeping a comfortably ironical distance from them. For instance, so-called “bad movies” such as Schoedsack’s King Kong, which the world of high culture viewed as being insignificant due to their lack of serious qualities, could now be seen as being not only enjoyable, but also having merit precisely because they were seen by most practitioners of high culture as being bad. In other words, what mattered was the irony of looking at something not only in terms of how good or how important it was, but in juxtaposition to a world that practitioners of camp sensibility saw as being overly serious.

Because there were unseen quotation marks around most aspects of camp culture, those which took the place of more serious literal discussions,  camp irony soon became a powerful new form of communication among its practitioners. And because that type of intelligent humor is always an inside joke, understood only by those who get it, it soon came to exemplify for those who were in on the joke, a higher form of social intelligence.

Of course, this is also very much the function of irony in terms of intelligent communication with others, that the joke alluded to is always an inside one. That is, it is a means of putting others on who aren’t in on it. In so doing, pointing out how one’s position on certain ideas or issues is inherently understood by those who are in on the joke as being superior to other positions.

It is likewise a form of intelligence that is communicated primarily non-verbally through inflections in one’s voice, speech patterns that are tongue-in-cheek, or through such nonverbal dynamics as the twinkle in one’s eye; which means that the irony is never a means of communication with others that can be understood literally. Rather, it needs to be experienced, like camp humor in a manner that is both offhanded and offbeat; an indirect form of communication in which the way the message is delivered becomes just as important as the message itself; meant only for those who are aware enough to understand it.

When the knight in the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail who has both his arms sliced off announces to everyone that, “It’s only a flesh wound,” the aware viewer immediately understands that what he is doing is casting an ironical eye toward all those battle or crime movies in which the violence is both very real and very literal. That is, the filmmaker is putting on all those who favor violent movies with an indirect comment about them without ever alluding to them directly.

If irony is something that needs to be experienced primarily physically through voice inflections or facial mannerisms, the question of course becomes one of asking what effect our current digital age, when people are communicating with each other primarily by typing words out of necessity into a keyboard, has had on ironical expression. Obviously, when communication is that which removes physical expression from the equation, it becomes much more difficult to express oneself ironically.

One prime example of how entirely literal expression has out of necessity replaced ironical humor and intelligence is the current Internet acronym LOL, which as everyone knows stands for laughing out loud; an abbreviated reference which seemingly makes it veritably impossible to wink indirectly and ironically at one thing while actually referring to another simply because it is out of necessity so inherently literal.

Of course, the next obvious question to be considered, it would seem, is that of asking what effect this incapacity to express oneself ironically when confined to the parameters of a keyboard has had on our social and persona communication with each other? And furthermore, is irony itself a necessary ingredient for intelligent communication within wider social parameters? That is, what might be missing when we are deprived of it in  significant ways?

 

 

 

Why Reality TV may be Ruining Film

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Recently I rewatched the film A Woman Under the Influence in which Gena Rowlands starred and which her longtime partner and iconic filmmaker John Cassavetes directed. I had first seen the film decades ago as part of an assignment in which those of us in the college course we were taking in film were asked as part of our final assignment to select a film we thought we would enjoy and then write a review of it. As I watched the film that first time, I was struck by what an incredible portrait it was of a woman struggling to maintain her mental health amidst an impossible domestic situation in which she was rarely seen by others in her life as the person that she was.

However, it was also a film which at the time felt so iconic, raw, and new simply because it was so unstructured and spontaneous (as nearly all films by Cassavetes do). I fact, when I read later that Cassavetes had actually written a fairly well-defined script, I actually had trouble believing it. For this was the age in which raw, unstructured, spontaneous filmmaking was very much the exception, and not the rule. And when one did encounter this sort of film (for example, The Panic in Needle Park which was directed by Jerry Schatzberg, and which was about heroin addicts on the upper west side of Manhattan) one tended to marvel at its life affirming spontaneity.

Unfortunately, now it seems that when one does encounter such a film, it often appears that a certain amount of the life has been drained out of it simply because we have grown so used to the unstructured yet highly superficial nature of reality television, which of course is unstructured in a similar manner in which many great spontaneous films of the 1970s were, but at the same time possess almost none of the meaningful dramatic content which was part of these earlier films. When I rewatched A Woman Under the Influence, I could barely believe that it was the same movie about which I had been so taken years ago; growing quickly bored by watching Gena Rowlands character Mabel stumble through her life which living on the edge of a complete mental breakdown.

And I began to ask myself why it was that a film which had so previously engaged me years ago now felt very much like it was now stale and robbed of much of its previous life. And then, soon afterwards the answer came to me. It was that I had seen similar unstructured, spontaneous situations on reality TV (although the vast majority of time ones which involved boring, empty people who have little to say to me about life in the world) that I had become so inured to them that I was not able to enter as readily the spontaneous, endlessly fascinating world of films like A Woman Under the Influence or The Panic in Needle Park.

As far as all this, I have one further suggestion. If reality television is going to increasingly become a part of our culture, why not create a program such as something which shows a group of thespians who run a theater company preparing dramatic presentations which reflect situations in their own lives? Now that might be interesting, certainly more interesting than programs having to do with rich housewives endlessly screaming at one another. Bravo used to be a great arts network. What in the world has happened to it? Finally, the best reality TV is now coming to our televisions this summer: The Olympic Games.

What Barbie Doesn’t Understand About Feminism

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In her iconic feminist tract A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf argued that in order to write and create properly women must have an income of 500 pounds to depend on each year as well as a room of their own where they remain undisturbed by others and also by the cares of daily life. Yet she also wrote of how if women are to reach their potential they must become more androgynous. That is, they should seek to embody both the masculine and feminine parts of themself. While the same could be said for men. That is, they too should seek to embody both the masculine and the feminine.

According to Woolf, unless both men and women can embody the androgynous mind both their writing and their character will be permanently flawed, leaving women frustrated and angry while men become too obsessed with themselves. As far as Woolf is concerned, the pitting of one sex against another, with one side claiming superiority while imparting inferiority to the opposite sex belongs to what she calls the school age stage of human existence where ultimately sides are drawn.

As far as the movie Barbie is concerned, although it does indeed make some valid points concerning feminisms, men, and a certain patriarchy which unfortunately still exists in our society, it also commits the cardinal sin of which Virginia Woold speaks of in her book, that of far too often  necessarily pitting one gender against another; and in so doing not allowing the single-sexed mind to make distinctions between the sexes that the androgynous mind would never make.

This is something that has troubled modern feminism for some time now; that in being so intent on opposing the male dominance of a patriarchy, any number of feminists haven’t allowed themselves to become more androgynous. which according to Virginia Woolf is the true path toward women reaching their full potential. Barbie certainly had some interesting points to make concerning female empowerment, but still it often felt as I watched the movie that in using the Barbie doll for its vehicle it didn’t fully examine potentially all sides of the female character.

Greta Gerwig is obviously an extremely talented filmmaker, yet it seems at times as if she unnecessarily casts men in a disparaging light. With the movie Little Women (which was a great version of Louisa May Alcott’s novel) she took aim at Henry David Thoreau (Alcott’s close friend) and his iconic novel Walden, claiming that it was easy to write his sojourn in the woods outside Concord, Massachusetts simply because he didn’t have a wife and children to care for. Yet when it came to her literary hero (Alcott) she never offered the same criticism concerning the feminine writer who likewise never married and never had children.

Why Artificial Intelligence Isn’t Really Intelligence

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As many people who study semantics and the meaning of words already know, the term oxymoron refers to a figure of speech in which two contradictory terms appear in conjunction with each other. For those who would choose to look at the matter more closely, the term artificial intelligence might indeed be seen a genuine oxymoron in the sense that what is artificial can never really be part of a genuine intelligence. That is if one is willing to look more closely at what the word intelligence really means in its broader context; one that is simply beyond the parameters of cognition, memory, and logical thought patterns.

If one looks at intelligence as a matter of having direct insight into the details and dynamics of the world in which one lives, rather than as a capacity for accurate cognition or the use of logical thinking and memory to ferret out the truth concerning various situations, then it would seem to be rather obvious that the sort of artificial apprehension of reality that is part of A.I. and all its various uses and devices is not a part of the use of one’s emotive and sensorial life that is required for this sort of immediate direct insight to take place. Indeed, the sort of analytical thought and memory that is part of A.I. often only dilutes that sort of insight.

That is to say, artificial intelligence, for all of its amazing powers will never be able to possess the sort of emotive or sensorial apprehension that is requited for moments of direct insight into the nature of things; an intelligence which is more immediate and more direct than what can be gained through the use of logical thought and memory, even as cognitively creative as those two dynamics might be at times in apprehending reality more clearly or in solving a number of our pressing problems. In addition, when A.I. enthusiasts speak of artificial intelligence possessing consciousness, it is not the consciousness born of direct insight, one that takes place beyond the domain of thoughts and words.

What we so desperately need in our current digital age is a redefinition of what intelligence means. Is it simply a matter of how to use cognitive thought and memory in order to think creatively, or does it have more to do with having direct insight into things at a place beyond thought and memory, where we can ultimately combine emotive and sensorial reactions to different elements of our world in order to see more clearly? If it is the latter, then A.I. will never be fully a part of what the word intelligence means. It will be able to bring all kinds of technologies to the world which exponentially can enrich our lives, but it will never possess genuine insight.

Albert Einstein figured out the relationship between space and time not nearly so much due to a cognitive apprehension of these things, but instead due to an intuitive realization of their dynamics. Pablo Picasso created much of his great cubist art after his immediate realization of the need to jettison the idea of the vanishing point. Niels Bohr was able to comprehend the structure of the atom and how electrons circle the nucleus due largely to his previous intuitive struggles with the nature of rational thought. And the great trumpet player Miles Davis was able to expand the world of bebop jazz into his beautiful, lyrical playing not nearly so much due to a better understanding of music theory, but largely due to his intuitive realization of what would happen if he simply lengthened the space between musical notes.

The possibility of perceiving our ourselves and our world through an intelligence which is anchored in the sort of direct insight which the above explorers of the fabric of inner space employed has always been with us. However, for this to occur, we need to recognize that the type of intelligence currently associated with A. I. and all of its resultant technologies does not fully exist at the same level that a holistic intelligence born of direct insight does; one that necessarily begins with our emotive and sensorial reactions to the world. Certainly, A.I. can provide many important new components to our world. Yet the one thing its can’t do is to exist in the midst of this same level of holistic awareness.

What A.I. Enthusiasts Just Don’t Get

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Now that Artificial Intelligence has become a significant part of our national conversation, all kinds of possibilities are being suggested on a regular basis for how A.I. might improve all our lives if we just give it a chance. From vast improvements in medicine, education, the arts, media, etc. the list of the startling new developments that artificial intelligence might bring to us has become in effect a justification of sorts for why we should drop many of our concerns about this radical new technology for which many are grappling with the possibility of the new world that it might bring to all our lives.

However, there is one relevant concern, the same one which has plagued education in our society for the better part of the past quarter century, which appears as if it might be paramount to a discussion of the danger which A.I. might be bringing to our modern world; this having to do with an emphasis of outer reality over the inner life. Similar in many ways to how education for those in their formative years has focused on the external results of learning (i.e. test scores and grades) rather than on what is taking place in children as they learn, A.I. is most likely going to cause people to focus on the miraculous things that this technology can do in the external world rather than on how it might affect people’s inner lives.

This is really the bottom-line question that we all need to be asking ourselves relative to the introduction of A.I. technology into all our lives. Despite the many incredible things that it can do to make the world a better place, will it end up dulling our inner lives simply because when we make use of A.I. whatever we are producing is not coming as fully from a place inside ourselves as when we don’t depend on it; when our inner spaces remain significantly emboldened by whatever we are creating and then using.

For example, when a piece of writing is produced by A.I. whether it be a serious newspaper article or merely copy for a particular advertisement, the focus and intensity of the writer has been removed from the equation in favor of expediency, and in some cases greater accuracy. In other words, the entire process becomes results-driven, rather than originating within the inner life of the writer. This may occasionally lead to more expeditious, even occasionally more accurate writing, but at the same time this process tends to dull the inner lives of writers simply because their writing has become less personal and less authentic. Then, over time writers with shallower inner lives will inevitably produce shallower pieces of writing.

Similarly, in the world of scientific investigation and creation, A. I. driven technologies may be able to produce faster, even more effective results to scientific research, yet at the same time, the emboldened inner lives of scientists and technology experts will become less connected to their important discoveries and inventions simply because much of the research and investigation is originating in a place outside of them. For instance, the incredible joy and passion which James Watson and Francis Crick experienced in constructing in their lab merely through the use of metal rods and clamps a model of the structure of DNA will become increasingly less a part of scientific investigation and discover.

What transpires in our inner lives is more about why we are all here on planet Earth than what we produce with the results of our creations. That is, how we engage the world and universe with what takes place inside us will always be significantly more important than the external results of those engagements. In short, we’re here primarily to expand our awareness of what it means to be alive in this world. And this is something which A.I. technologies, for all the marvelous things they might produce, and how they might make our lives more expedient and creative, will never really be able to give us.

Greta Gerwig’s Somewhat Hidden Double Standard

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As everyone now knows, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie is raking in millions of dollars and a great deal of positive approbation for her imaginative take on how the doll, if it were to come to life in the real world, would confront male patriarchy in various ways, including a visit to the all-male board room of Mattel, the toy company which designed the doll. So far, even those who find fault with the premises and politics of the movie, saying it dishonestly represents a time of cultural prejudice which has already passed, applaud it for being extremely entertaining.

Although I have not seen the movie, and therefore am in no position to comment on either the merits of the film or Greta Gerwig’s talents as a filmmaker, I’m able to recall a comment of Ms. Gerwig’s from the past, one she made while her brilliant, entertaining version of Louisa May Alcott‘s Little Women was in theaters, involving the life and art of the 19th century writer Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau, who as many people are aware, wrote his iconic account of living apart from society in the woods surrounding Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts while he was writing his enlightening account of what he might learn from nature in the book that became Walden.

Gerwig’s comment was that Thoreau of course was able to live in the woods in his hut and explore nature in the insightful way he did largely because as a solitary bachelor he didn’t have a wife and children for whom he had to care. Upon reading this, one has to wonder if Louisa May Alcott, one of Gerwig’s heroines and someone who like Thoreau never married and never had children, might be subjected to the same standard for personal success by the filmmaker. That is, would she likewise expound on the idea that Alcott was able to give herself over to writing Little Women because she was without a family?

A certain issue that tends to underlay this misunderstanding is the mistaken confluence of solitude with loneliness. That is people tend to confuse the positive qualities embodied in solitude (i.e. the spiritual space, freedom, and capacity for personal integration which it gives one) with loneliness itself. Whereas the two things are inherently and radically different in that genuine solitude is often eagerly sought for entirely positive reasons, whereas loneliness is obviously something that people run from in fear as they tend to become more closely wrapped inside the shell of a protective cocoon while they desperately search for some sort of meaningful personal connection with others.

Thoreau not only embraced but likewise reveled in the benefits of solitude, something which he wrote about so insightfully. This would seem to mean that whether or not he had a family to raise during his sojourns to Walden Pond is really very much beside the point simply because it tends to minimize the nature of his solitary experiences at the idyllic setting of the Pond. Rather, what does seem to be most important is his passionate embrace of solitude as a significant doorway to a larger consciousness; something which Greta Gerwig didn’t really seem to understand in her minimizing of his experience.

The Brilliant Labyrinths of Sidney Lumet

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One might not think that the brilliant police dramas from the late director Sidney Lumet would have relevance in today’s era of cancel culture and social media, but really nothing could be further from the truth. For the fact is that everything today tends to be cloaked in a blanket of black and white. This person is a hero, and this one is a villain, with little space in between the two. If someone is judged to be a villain, that is what they are, with very little middle ground left for long-term reflective judgment, and once someone comes to inhabit this particular category, their actions, except those which continue to define them as being morally corrupt, are often rendered to be pretty much obsolete.

That is, once social media has pinned the proverbial scarlet letter on someone, that it seems is where they will tend to stay regardless of further circumstances. The recent movie Tar with Cate Blanchett appeared to be a significant example of this; with a talented conductor of classical music having her life veritably destroyed by her past indiscretions with various members of her orchestra. However, contrary to this sort of finality, the real truth tends to be that navigating such a world of ethical conundrums can be more of an adventure in navigating a precarious hall of mirrors in which there are no easy answers. In fact, two films from some forty years ago by Lumet, police dramas to be exact, depict this potential search for salvation brilliantly.

In Serpico, from 1973, New York City detective Frank Serpico, played brilliantly by Al Pacino, refuses to take pay-off money from criminals and other nefarious characters that the officers he works with take regularly. Consequently, they become deeply suspicious of him, and so his safety and even his life are put in peril. After reporting an attempted bribe to a high-ranking investigator as a young police officer, he is laughed at and simply told to keep the money. After reporting this sort of corruption to other superiors regularly, that which he soon finds is rampant within the department, the word gets out on him, and eventually he is shot in the face during a drug bust when the policemen with whom he is working fail to protect him.

In 1981’s Prince of the City, starring the late Treat Williams in another iconic role, narcotics detective Danny Ciello, played by Williams, is part of an elite New York City unit who are given wide latitude to make cases against defendants, but who at the same time are involved in various illegal practices, such as skimming money from criminals and supplying informants with drugs for their cooperation. Eventually, after being approached by a federal prosecutor who is investigating police corruption, Ciello finds that his conscience about the activities in which he and his partners are involved begins to really bother him, and so he begins to report many of the illegal activities in which he has seen while on the job, eventually crossing a line he had told federal investigators he would never cross, That is, naming his partners who are likewise his best friends.

What might be so deeply relevant in these two films relative to today’s Internet cancel culture climate is how easy answers these days seemed to have entirely disappeared from view. That is, rather than move through the labyrinth of moral complexities which Frank Serpico and Danny Ciello had to negotiate – one where friends can soon become enemies and enemies can soon become friends – we seem to be adopting a one size fits all definition of our moral quandries, rather than face the gruesome reality that we might not be able to face other people as the person we really are; and so we often, rather than allowing social media to come after us, hide from others in going along with the conformist line in various situation, one that we know will significantly protect us from the merciless nature of cancel culture.

More than anything, what makes these two movies so important is that they allow true heroism to exist within a web of moral complexities, one in which the hatred of others who used to be one’s friends might be coming down on them. Right up to the end of both movies, Frank Serpico and Danny Ciello remained highly uncertain of what they were doing. Yet at the same time, they recognized that they owed it to themselves and to those people they cared about to plunge ahead anyway.

Should Rock and Roll be Meaningful for Old People?

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If one even occasionally pays attention to their Twitter feed, they have no doubt seen how aging baby boomers throughout European cities are flocking to stadiums to hear the music of 73 year-old Bruce Springsteen and his E Street Band. And of course, as he always does, Bruce is giving them their money’s worth, playing his usual three or four hours with a heartfelt passion that has very likely never been duplicated in the history of rock and roll. And of course, on the surface at least, that would appear to be entirely wonderful; that Bruce’s passion, and the passion of his fans can survive any number of complicated, difficult generations.

Except there may be one trouble, that which has really nothing to do with Springsteen, his fan base, or other high profile aging rockers who should be lauded for producing great music with the sort of heart and soul which they seemingly just can’t quit. It’s simply that rock and roll was never originally intended to be the province of old people. That is, it’s the one art form in our culture which is meant to celebrate the passion and energy of youth. Jazz, due to its improvisational nature, can be played by people of any age without it starting to seem silly, and the inherent beauty of great classical music transcends various time periods. But rock music, if it is to remain meaningful, may need to be necessarily anchored in the present moment.

Gracie Slick of Jefferson Airplane fame has been quoted in the past as saying that people who are fifty or sixty years old playing rock and roll on stage in front of other people tend to look ridiculous. And years ago, at a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony Ray Davies of the Kinks, upon receiving his statue, commented, “Rock and Roll has finally become respectable. What a drag.” What both of these great artists spoke to, obviously, was the spirit of a genre which began to die years ago with the death of AM radio, when everything new, fresh, and important could be heard, more than anywhere else, coming out of the radio on the dashboard of the family car. Since then, for many of us who came of age during that time, nothing has ever really seemed to be the same.

The sad truth is that time inevitably takes its toll on everything, even great art. When Springsteen’s landmark album Born to Run came out in 1975, two now famous tracks which appeared on it were of course Born to Run and Thunder Road; iconic songs which so brilliantly explored the angst and restlessness of young love and exploration. Now, unfortunately, nearly fifty years later, those two titles might seem to suggest to someone who is unfamiliar with the songs an escaped aging convict from a state prison who is on the run from his captors, or a group of aging moonshiners who are selling liquor from the trunk of their car somewhere in the deep South.

The period of time in which we baby boomers came of age was of course an incredibly exciting one. In point of fact, everything seemed to be happening so fast that it was hard to even keep up with it. Yet it seems we don’t want to make the mistake that Jay Gatsby made when he looked at the green light shining from a dock on the other side of the bay in hopes of rekindling his love for Daisy Buchanan, believing that it was possible to relive the past. For not only is the past gone forever, In point of fact, it may be something that doesn’t really exist in the first place, except in the illusory world of our flawed imaginations.

It is still possible for older rockers to discover other outlets in which to display their creativity and their passion. This past year, Susanna Hoffs, former lead singer of the 1980s group The Bangles, released her highly successful novel This Bird Has Flown, an engaging, hilarious novel about an aging superstar who is given a second chance to explore the possibility of stardom, a book which has been drawing rave reviews; which is most likely a good thing. For one fears that if the Bangles were still on stage singing their famous 1988 hit In Your Room, about a scintillating hook-up between a boy and girl, they might have, with the passage of time, been tagged as aging Mrs. Robinsons from Mike Nichols film The Graduate.