The 1970s

     Even as a young child I had an obsessive personality.  Not that I had OCD, as far as I know, but I did tend to latch onto something and obsess over it.  I remember being captivated by  The Last of the Mohicans in the fifth grade.  I used to dream about it at night and sometimes imagine myself in the film.  I even used to scrawl my favorite scenes onto paper with carefully sharpened color pencils.  The Last of the Mohicans made me interested in Native American culture and history, which I think is the first time that dry, dead thing called history called my name.  
   In the seventh grade I discovered a band called Led Zeppelin.  Instant fanaticism.  I memorized their songs, watched live concert footage and interviews on YouTube, drew them over and over again, and shed tears over John Bonham's untimely death. By the way, I never make fun of One Directioners; It would make me a hypocrite.  
   It's impossible to listen to the music of Led Zeppelin, that unique mix of relentless, primal call, that heavy, heavy beat, and that golden Sunday feeling, without falling beneath their spell.  Even temporarily, although mine was hardly that.  It is also impossible to listen to them without discovering their contemporaries: Aerosmith, the Beatles, Grateful Dead, Steve Miller Band, Bob Seger, and so many others.  In an imitation of my idols, I began to wear my hair long, and parted down the center; I developed a healthy fear for "the man" and scorned popular culture.  I wasn't being a hipster-those hadn't been spawned yet.
   I used to fall into pensive moods and contemplate how much the world sucked, mostly because it was 2009 and not 1972.   Looking back, I remember why, but what escapes memory is the exact feeling of nostalgia, that my twelve-year-old-self used to have.  Whenever I picture the '70s, the image is still grainy, the color still like an episode of the original Charlie's Angels .  
     Different eras emit a certain atmosphere, and the '70's make me feel a sense of laziness, of change, and of a strangely elegant awkwardness.  It's incredible that the music alone could communicate that to me, that the decade after the  '60's baby boom and the turmoil of the Cold War  could make itself heard.  Even before I read about all that in history books, I could feel the uncertainty, the outrage, that came with the mass consumerism and search for individuality.  That isn't something that can be learned in a school.  
   I would lie awake at night and image myself as a hippie in the '70s.  I would imagine that I wore wear bell bottoms and boots, saved money from my after school job to buy Led Zeppelin records, and protested the Ohio shootings.  I think that I would have hung that iconic poster of Farrah Fawcett-Majors in her red swimsuit up somewhere in my room.  

   Sometimes I felt such a sense of loss and of nostalgia that it would bring tears to my eyes.  My Mother has walked into my room, astonished at my crying more times than I'd care to admit.  So many great and significant things happened in the '70s, but the what seems to be forgotten by nearly everyone is the intrigue of every day living. I wouldn't know, but I can't believe that growing up then is the same as growing up now.
                   

"Catch the wind, see ya spin, sail away, seize the day" ~Led Zeppelin