Tastes Like Red

March 10, 2009

The only good thing about being sick is the Nyquil fog that I get to invite into my system, a sort of chemical induced paracoma, where murder mysteries on TCM come to life.

There's something about the 30's-40's. All of the old vintage stuff wasn't old and vintage, but brand new. It was a time when airline travel was glamorous and people wore ties and gowns to dinner. Even smoking looks fresh and new in the black and white films.

Where is the new today?

Our roads and bridges and buildings seem to be getting older and older. All of the new is small, electronic, and swimming just above the era of big, left-over industry. Factories stand empty and we spend our time in facebook.

Every era has its own new, its own contribution, but the transition from no movies, no phones, no planes, no television, to having all of these things, within a short thirty years or so, was more new packed into a small space than even we in our fast-paced modern world are used to.

It's hard to see your own time. I do remember a time before the internet, when Compuserve and AOL and email addresses were exotic. I remember a time when you had to actually go to the library or buy encyclopedias to look something up, a time before Google and Wikipedia.

But still, I want more new. I want new electric cars, new buildings, new factories for making the Next Big Thing. New cities. New roads. New ways.

How can a nation, a world, with so many people get stuck in such an economy, when the very breath of billions is idling like a planet-wide engine, ready to bring out the next big thing. If so much new invention came out of the post depression era of the 30's, then imagine what we are capable of today.

Great things are coming. A new era of the new. Or maybe that's just the fever.