Subject: Re: Schrafft's or Schnapps
From: Cecilia Baader (ceciliaann@hotmail.com)
Date: Fri Aug 25 2000 - 09:55:28 GMT
"Scottie Bowman" <rbowman@indigo.ie> wrote:
> . . . chap who began telling me
> of the piercing homesickness he felt for the 50s.
>
> Any explanatory suggestions for an intrigued, elderly shrink?
There was a time in my life when, if the movie was in black and white, I
watched it. And if Fred and Ginger were dancing across the screen, I could
tell you if it was Top Hat or The Gay Divorcee, based upon the clothes they
were wearing and the routine they were doing. I wanted to *be* Ginger. I
wanted to dress like she did, drink martinis on balconies, swap witty lines
with other witty people, and dance under the stars with a man in a top hat
and tails.
The thirties and the forties-- when the men still wore hats and the ladies
still wore gloves.
It appealed to my aesthetic sense of proper living, I think. I kept
thinking that they knew how to live back then and I missed it. I listened
to Ella Fitzgerald sing Cole Porter and thought, there's nothing better than
this.
(To tell you the truth, I still think so.)
But why did I look to the past in the first place? Tough question, and I'm
not sure that I have an answer. Except maybe that when my fascination with
that time period was at its height, I wanted to be anywhere but where I was.
So perhaps it's a form of escapism: some people decide they want to go to
Rome or Buenos Aires or Beijing; perhaps others feel like they could have
found it in another time that is not this one. You never have to go there
because it's impossible, no? So it's okay to dream. You never have to prove
yourself wrong.
It takes a little while for a person to understand that the time and the
place is immaterial. That it's the living that counts.
It's an idea, anyway.
Regards,
Cecilia.
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