Reflections of! A life that used to be.

When I thought about it, I was sort of sad that blogs died.  Wasn't that fun?  Writing and sharing interesting things, before half the shit you saw on the internet was just shares from your stupid uncle, something about mooslims?

And it is kind of sad.  The blogs I read are all either gone or frozen in 2013.  And before that, the Livejournals I read, all frozen in 2004.  Livejournal was what Facebook should have become: part expression and part commentary.  But then I realized that it might actually be perfect that the world has moved on from the traditional blog, the one with no ads and no real names.  I think that means that I can skitter back in like a mouse to live richly in the ruins.  I can get back to trying to write for fun without the bother of colleagues and family.  Or without worrying that what I'm posting is crap, because no one is looking.

I've been diving into old stuff a lot lately.  Every five years or so I have some kind of mini crisis as I remember another part of my life and try to decide if it was better.  When I was younger, I always thought the past was better, but as I've aged, I find I've become almost savagely pragmatic.  Things were fucking dumb back then and if I remember it fondly, I'm probably just wrong. 

Then I broke into an old laptop that I had forgotten the password to.  I began to browse, increasingly shocked as I opened folder after folder of old pics, some of friends and family (appalling young, all of us), some of things I had saved as inspiration (dumb or trite mostly), and then my iTunes folders.  So much old music, a strange and senseless mix of saccharine 1950s radio tunes, cheesy European synthpop, 90s hip hop, 80s goth, and Type O Negative.  So much Type O Negative. 

I listened to the Jarvis album, Jarvis, from 2006 and remembered copying the cd for my friends.  I loved to make little presents then, so I bought cds that looked like records, and printed out the album cover and reverse and stuck them in the jewel boxes to give to friends.  Basically pirating shit they should have bought for Jarvis' sake, but I always gave music away then.  I made three volumes of mix cds over a couple of years, all of which Michael gloriously still has, and bless him, still listens to in his little Dodge Charger, the most unexpected car in Portland.  All self important cool kid music that is still so indulgently good, The Crystals and Serge Gainsbourg and Pulp and Liberace, Harry Nilsson and Goldfrapp and Joan Baez.  Music to be young to.  

Now, as I balance on my gnarled cane of agedness, I see that my more recent, highly unromantic take on the past is probably wrongheaded.  I've always had a weird thing about the past, either hating it (my own, bad friends, problematic boyfriends) or obsessing about how much better it was, which was what I did for my whole life about the generations before mine.  No middle ground here, either it SUCKED or was better than anything can ever be going forward. 

All I want to know is, now that Michael Jackson is cancelled, can I still love the Jackson 5?  Because this is my favorite song.