A Man out of Time

It's so common to be in love with something that doesn't exist that it borders on cliché.  My problem is that my love does exist, I just don't exist with it.

I've loved it before I even knew exactly what it was.  There was a feeling I used to get from reading the stacks of books I used to go through as a precocious reader, many of them either produced in or set back in this glorious period that I attributed to warmth.  Like being held in a blanket close to a fireplace.  We never had a fireplace but as all of this was in my head it didn't matter; I imagined that's what it would feel like.


Trying to place the reality of the image was difficult, after all I had no frame of reference.  I had an impression of bookcases, the orange glow of dim lamplight, dark wood and lots of laughter.  It was years later that I discovered Art Deco, read about the Roaring Twenties, listened to an obscene amount of Jazz, fell in love and got swept up amongst the great masters of a bygone era.


Monet, Matisse, Mondrian, Picasso, Braque, Modigliani, Chagall, Duchamp, De Chirico, Miró, Magritte and Dalí. The protagonists of a historical period of exceptional artistic vitality, set in Paris, right after the end of the Great War. In amongst them some of the great writers; Fitzgerald, Fitzgerald, Eliot, Passos, Seeger, Hemingway and Remarque.  Une génération perdue; the 'Lost Generation', a term Gertrude Stein popularised for the high society who gathered together in 1920s Paris.  I dream of what it was like, see interpretations on screen or at the theatre.  If I was there I doubt I'd be at the party, just pressing my nose up against the glass, probably not even that - I might not even have been able to afford the trip across the Channel.


I've often said that I'd love to have lived in this time but know, deep down, that I'd miss the luxuries I have now.  Not being in prison would be the main thing, the wondrous science and technology through which I'm writing this another, medicine and its vitality, I could carry on but it'd probably be quite a long list.


In the exact opposite way I've also been fascinated and somewhat depressed by the future.  As someone who spent a significant period of my life looking upwards I've dreamt of what it would be like to explore between the stars and how that would change society down here.  What wondrous technologies would exist that I will never know or can dream of?  


Feeling like being born too late and too soon is an awful feeling but the reality is that I'm just going to have to suck it up and make the most of what I have now.  I wrote something like that on a piece of paper and stuck it inside my wardrobe a few years ago and since have been a lot happier.  I've had some of the most amazing experiences of my life so far, there are more on the horizon and surely many below it.  I might not have made it to those parties in Paris but perhaps I can be part of those today.


I can't say that if I had the option I wouldn't zip back to observe (like the lovely film 'Midnight in Paris' that I saw recently) or skip ahead a few chapters to see what was coming.  Psychologically I can guess what that says about me but if you don't feel the same way then you probably haven't spent enough time looking at what came before or spent enough time dreaming about what's just around the corner.