The 70s: Victim of bad film stock

I have a theory that memories of particular eras are seen through the filter of the prevailing film stock of the time. It is as if the memory loses track of what was observed first hand and what was recollected later with photographic help.

I suspect that my recollection of the last ten years will always maintain the flat, luminous quality of digital photography--a reality so upclose and shimmering it begins to seem unreal.

Memories of the 80s and 90s, on the other hand, have a fussy solidity that seems nervous and defensive. Every shape is stamped in heavily saturated hues, as if to say, "Everything is back to normal now, right?"

I even have ex post facto memories of the 50s and 60s, an inherited awareness of those years when my parents were younger than I am now, a hint of mischief in their eyes as they seek a measure of youthful joy in a world as stiff and rigid as crew cut.

But it is the bleary, kaleidoscopic images of the 70s--blurred and faded in shades of yellow and orange, as if they had been soaked in water--that I tend linger. It is their utter unreality, their sense of ghostliness, that creates a seemingly unbridgeable distance to my childhood.

The truth is that what I now know about the time in which I grew up--a decade of exhaustion, decadence, and malaise--fails to match up with what I personally remember. Had I known then that it was a worthless time, perhaps I would have spent less time wandering around in blissful ignorance.

Beyond the carnivalesque swirl of my childhood memories were cultural currents that were frightening, electrifying, and ultimately unsustainable. This blog is an attempt to fill in the gaps of those faded memories--to make sense of a time that feels impossibly insubstantial 30 years down the road.