“If you’re sad today, just remember that the world is 4.4 billion years old and you somehow managed to live at the same time as David Bowie.”

• Simon Pegg

Long Ago and Far Away

My best friend and I often discuss how lucky we both were to have been born in 1960. We are united in believing that we couldn’t have been born at a better time or place in history. The tales of war and woe that filtered into my young consciousness through our black and white TV, all came from far away. Canada was at peace and growing ever more prosperous. Meanwhile, the culture of the 60’s was responding to exciting new movements in art and music, civil liberties for women and minorities, and the space race. I still remember playing with my Major Matt Mason space toys while Abby Road played on our stereo in the living room.

Location is Everything

With the exception of growing up without a father, I had an idyllic childhood. We had our own 4 bedroom home on a quiet residential street with over 10 acres of field and bush behind us and another large bush with amazing sledding trails across the street at the front. It was  a sort of Tom Sawyerish life: building forts, exploring the forests and following streams to their bubbling underground sources, lying on my back staring up at the clouds and playing baseball in the field.

A Musical Renaissance

And the music! I benefitted from having older brothers and sisters who exposed me to all the great singers and groups of the age: Cream, Jefferson Airplane, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Beatles, The Stones; Joplin, Hendrix, Joe Cocker, and Dylan, to name just a few. But it only kept getting better!

Along came glam rock, new wave and punk. David Bowie’s Space Oddity had blown my mind when I was only 9. The second time it happened was when I bought a copy of Horses by Patti Smith in 1975. Then I heard Zıggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars and I knew I’d found my own music. Bowie, Iggy Pop, and Lou Reed became my musical idols. Soon new wave came along: Ultravox, Magazine, The Cars, and Gary Smith – wow! Next it was punk and ska, with groups like The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Stranglers, Madness and The Specials. Reggae was a constant throughout the decades, beginning with Bob Marley, but expanding to include Peter Tosh, UB40, Steel Pulse, and Black Uhuru. The era ended for me, however, in that one last creative burst of Grunge and Manchester music at the end of the 80s. Meanwhile, threading his way through the different musical eras like a master tailor until his death in 2016 was fellow Canadian and master songwriter, Leonard Cohen. The deaths of he and David Bowie that year struck me like a body blow.

Reasons for Hope

Historically, the arch of history seemed to be bending towards justice with passage of the ground breaking Civil Rights Act in 1964. The Vietnam War ended in 1975, The Berlin Wall came down in 1989, and Apartheid ended the following year. Francis Fukuyama’s acclaimed book, The End of history (1992), had many convinced we were heading towards a Star Trek future of peace and prosperity.

The Darkest Timeline

But it all came crashing to the end in the year 2000 when George Bush, Jr. won the Electoral College. Two U.S. led Iraq Wars, and a 20 year occupation of Afghanistan later, Vladimir Putin was so emboldened by the West’s double standards that he invaded first Georgia (2008), then the Crimea (2014), has supported the autocratic regime and genocidal policies of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad since 2015, and launched his war against Ukraine on February 14th, 2022. Meanwhile, a pandemic, gun violence, and backsliding on abortion and voting rights have enflamed the culture war, threatening to drag the U.S. back to the Dark Ages.

Such a Contrast

It’s not that the forty years between 1960 and 2000 were perfect – there was the war in Vietnam, the Cold War, and the unholy triumvirate of Reagan, Thatcher, and Mulroney in the 80s, after all. But at least there was a sense of optimism and progress back then which inspired hope in our species. Now as we emerge from a global pandemic, pharmaceutical companies, arms manufacturers, and oil companies are making record breaking profits while new diseases (Monkeypox) sprout, wars proliferate, forests burn, and lakes dry up. I  wonder how much longer we have left in this upside down alternative reality that we’ve stumbled into.