Once upon a time . . . in middle America, a middle-aged woman got the understanding as to why nostalgia is such an acute emotion, at this stage of her life. She watched Once Upon a Time . . . In Hollywood with her husband, and they both completely recognized the 1960s/1970s hair styles, the cars, the clothes, the mannerisms, the music and the complete lack of technology – things that were depicted in great and careful detail, in the movie. The woman and her husband came to the understanding that they had reached a stage of life where they had once lived in a world, that looks almost nothing like the world that they live in today. They had reached the age where they could now see that they were no longer in the long stage of growing up and evolving from one time period to another, but that so much evolution had happened, that it was pretty clear that they had lived in two completely different worlds, just in their lifetimes. “How many utterly unique worlds do you experience in an average lifetime?” she wondered. “And why does it sometimes seem so much more acutely obvious, at some times versus other times, that so much change has occurred?” She understood that change is the only constant. She often spouted that tome to anyone who gave her soapbox attention. “But why don’t we see it happening on a regular basis?” she asked herself. “Why does it seem that we have woken up from one dream world to an instant other world with only a hazy idea of how the transformation happened? And only a foggy inkling of how much change has occurred inside of us, to match the now entirely different outsides of us?” It was a lot to think about on a Saturday morning. It was kind of exhausting pondering this deep realization, and there were chores to be done and kids to be picked up and meals to be made. She would have to put this line of thinking to rest, so that she could just live. She would just “do the experience” of another evolution and perhaps she would reach another stage in life where she would become breathless with wonder, realizing that she had yet again, entered a whole new world.
Tag: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Nine Inch Turnaround
I was reading the reviews of Quentin Tarantino’s latest movie, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which features the time in Hollywood leading up to the infamous Manson murders. Of course, the internet being what it is, so chock full of information- pertinent and not, that I ended up spending a fair amount of time this morning researching some of even the minor details surrounding Sharon Tate and the horrible, terrifying, mortifying events that stunned America for so long. These Manson murders are so evil, that I have known and heard about the Manson murders for my entire lifetime (they occurred a few months before I was born).
Sharon Tate’s sister has been an advocate for victims’ rights and has been dedicated to keeping her sister’s murderers in jail, for the rest of their lives. She also brought a very important “aha” moment to Trent Reznor, lead singer of the band Nine Inch Nails, who had rented the home where the murders took place in 1992, nicknamed it “Pig” and shot a video there. (For the record, the home was finally demolished in 1994.) This is what he had to say:
My awakening about all that stuff came from meeting Sharon Tate’s sister. While I was working on Downward Spiral, I was living in the house where Sharon Tate was killed. Then one day I met her sister. It was a random thing, just a brief encounter. And she said: “Are you exploiting my sister’s death by living in her house?” For the first time the whole thing kind of slapped me in the face. I said, “No, it’s just sort of my own interest in American folklore. I’m in this place where a weird part of history occurred.” I guess it never really struck me before, but it did then. She lost her sister from a senseless, ignorant situation that I don’t want to support. When she was talking to me, I realized for the first time, “What if it was my sister?” I thought, “Fuck Charlie Manson.” I don’t want to be looked at as a guy who supports serial-killer bullshit.
I went home and cried that night. It made me see there’s another side to things, you know? It’s one thing to go around with your dick swinging in the wind, acting like it doesn’t matter. But when you understand the repercussions that are felt … that’s what sobered me up: realizing that what balances out the appeal of the lawlessness and the lack of morality and that whole thing is the other end of it, the victims who don’t deserve that.
With all of the information thrown at us these days, it is so easy to get desensitized to it all. Even if we all aren’t perpetrating any evil ourselves, it’s so easy to rationalize looking the other way. Life is complicated. It is hard to figure out what hills to die on. Still, I suppose looking at everyone we come across with a little more empathy, trying to really do the mental walk of “a mile in their shoes”, might be an excellent way to start towards the journey of more benevolence, understanding and humaneness.