The Difference Engine

After a certain amount of time on this Earth (experiences had, opportunities amassed) eveybody starts considering his age as a differentiating factor in his relationships with other people of the opposite sex. What distinguishes this from the respective feelings of your youth is the fact that you are no longer the youngest, or at least one of the youngest, persons in the room. The way to handle your absent youth, especially in the face of the presence of some other's, is twofold: you either appreciate it as a positive trait of itself in others or you internalise it as your own lack of something you used to possess. Difficult as it is in any case to approach the reality that shapes a younger person and bridge the gap of your respective cultures, the question is whether you are willing to submit to the test - to try to relate or not. In a way, communication with this younger generation becomes a fight: a fight mainly with your self to listen, to process, to digest, to explain an alien landscape of colloquialisms, gestures, symbols and meanings. At the same time it is also an attempt to convey these concepts and meanings that constitute your own personal identity and a rough sketch of its background. I find that most of the time the result is negative: different generations, speak their piece to the opposite sex, do their sales pitch in their own terms and watch the whole effort crash and burn for lack of common ground. The era of the mobile phone mentality is so much at a distance from that of the tv that at times I feel as a whole different species. My modern age, shiny bright late in the 20th century, seems as many times removed from the brand new one early in the 21st that's in need of an interpreter. And no real human intimacy can occur in a menage à trois.

Artful insurrection

Say you want a (lyrical) revolution.

One More Day

Picking up a Spider-Man comic after ten years or so can throw you into (minor) turmoil: you are looking into a retro '60s style of story where Parker is struggling with the same aggravating job/personal life situation he faced back then - which for me at least looks rather irrelevant in the '00s. Following what prompted the change, I started reading Joe Quesada's interview at the end of the volume (penciller + Marvel editor-in-chief) and it hit me at some point mid-through. This is not about Spider-Man or aunt May or Mary Jane, of course. This is about the death of the '80s: how all these things that were running through you when you were reading SM then (the studies, the girlfriends/boyfriends, the job, your friends, your favorite books, your favorite team) were done or off somewhere else, were memories, were past. And erasing the marriage between MJ and Peter Parker along with erasing their storylines was also erasing your memory in some subtle way, telling you it was time to forget all this, forget the Hobgoblin, forget Doctor Oc, forget waiting for next Tuesday for the orange and black-and-white pages, forget your 15-year-old self, forget the '80s. And grow up. Violently.