I got to thinking a while back about a lot of the cool, cocky and macho dads that were around when I was a little kid, and how a lot of them are sort of ailing and decrepit now with various health problems and such. Thinking about it makes it hard for me to take someone in their hipness seriously. I mean everyone else takes them seriously of course, but they just look naively mortal to me. Like when I’m out and I see a “life of the party” type dude, and everyone’s so interested and excited, I’m thinking in twenty years that guy’s probably going to have prostate problems or develop some sort of debilitating illness. And the beautiful girl of the summer of the year, will be off the map in 5. You know, the one that all the guy’s are after right now, that all the former beautiful girls of the summers of past years envy and complain about… in a few years she may be 200 pounds and be all washed up. In a few more years she may get diagnosed with something that will change her life forever.
I started thinking of all this a few years ago while reading in the bathtub about the disco era, about how there was this huge social scene, and everyone was so cool and indestructible, but within a few short years, people that were once high up in the social hierarchy that people worshipped, and probably thought they were too cool to associate with certain people, and bragged about their sexual conquests… within just a few years many of them were humbled by various medical conditions, on their deathbeds and such.
The timeline at warholstars
is a good reference for this. Just go through it and substitute your local hipsters’ names.
So that’s what I’m thinking of when I’m out for a night on the town. And I know that one’s supposed to just have a blast and not contemplate these sorts of things while grinding on the dance floor, but I just find it bothers me that others don’t appear to have this same self-conscious awareness…even though there are times when I wished I didn’t have it and am in fact nostalgic for more innocent times when I did not yet have quite so much of it.
I think it all ties in with greek myth’s like pandora’s box, or the metaphoric story of adam and eve and the tree of knowledge, lost innocence and discovering we are naked.
Tags: adam and eve, andy warhol, dark, disco era, hipsters, life of the party, lost innocence, nakedness, pandora's box, reading in the bathtub, self awareness, warhol stars
