Every generation thinks it’s special — my grandparents because they remember horses and buggies, my parents because of the Depression. The over-30’s are special because they knew the Red Scare of Korea, Chuck Berry and beatniks. My older sister is special because she belonged to the first generation of teenagers (before that, people in their teens were adolescents), when being a teenager was still fun. Mine is the generation of unfulfilled expectations.
She was the champion of nonconformity and so — like thousands of others — we joined the masses of her fans.
I don’t watch TV as an anthropologist, rising loftily above my subject to analyze.
I doubt if it’s real, this abandonment of marijuana. But the frenzy is gone, certainly, the excitement and the fear of getting caught and the worry of where to get the good stuff. What’s happened to dope is what happens to a new record: you play it constantly, full volume, at first. Then, as you get to know the songs, you play them less often, not because you’re tired of them exactly, but just because you know them. They’re with you always, but quietly, in your head.
You’re not supposed to care too much any more. Reactions have been scaled down from screaming and jelly-bean-throwing to nodding your head and maybe — if the music really gets to you — tapping a finger. We need a passion transfusion, a shot of energy in the veins. It’s what I’m most patient with, in my generations — this languid, I-don’t-give-a-shit—ism that stems in part, at least from a culture of put-ons in which any serious expression of emotion is branded sentimental and old-fashioned. The fact that we set such a premium on being cool reveals a lot about my generation; the idea is not to care. You can hear it in the speech of college students today: cultivated monotones, low volume, punctuated with four-letter words that come off sounding only bland.