Boomer Brain Reflecting on Human Achievement and Culture: Mick Jagger's Someone to be Proud Of

I was sitting in my beautiful marble and tile bathroom, for the very simplest of reasons, and, lost in thought, I put my head in my hands and rubbed my hands through my hair and across my forehead and temples. I became alarmed when I discerned I had a fever, like hot coals, but only in the pre-frontal lobe, and only on the right side, near the temple. That area was very hot, seemingly inflamed. I ran to the computer and searched. Wikipedia, for what it's worth, told me this:

"The most typical neurologic term for functions carried out by the pre-frontal cortex area is executive function. Executive function relates to abilities to differentiate among conflicting thoughts, determine good and bad, better and best, same and different, future consequences of current activities, working toward a defined goal, prediction of outcomes, expectation based on actions, and social "control" (the ability to suppress urges that, if not suppressed, could lead to socially-unacceptable outcomes)".

Naturally we don't want to devolve into anything crumpled up and tortured, and we won't. When we Boomers suspect that our kids have started salivating at the thought of having us declared non compos mentis, it does give us a little boost, gotta pick up our heels. I realize, of course, that the current political situation has driven my prefrontal cortex to the brink of something from "Mission Impossible": "This tape will self-destruct in twenty seconds." I mean how much more can a sane person take? And, uh, what was that mission we were supposed to do, again? Oops too late. Brain's shorting out and getting hot in spots. But hold your horses kiddies, it's just a short, and there are boxes of new fuses down in the basement.

This Boomer generation, so well-intended, didn't get in on the inside track to save mankind, which is where we thought we were going for awhile, but we did ok. Like every generation of warriors before us, we too, like Odysseus, grow old and feeble, and die. Imagine Timothy Leary's ashes, by his directive, shot from some cannon into space orbit, his own little psychedelic redemption. Carl Sagan tried his best to legitimize some of his most far-flung thoughts, and helped NASA send out that Voyager Golden Record depicting our status here on earth. Aldous Huxley thought about it....he was right, we got our Soma, aka Prozac, and we became the Prozac Nation. But we still weren't saved. Who would have thought that some spaceship or some drug wouldn't have come along and rescued us by now?

I like to think at times of John F Kennedy, with his eternal flame at Arlington, fluttering at times, and Jacqueline, her dignified bones beside him, but then what? Then I remember Joe DiMaggio sending roses daily to Marilyn Monroe's grave. And Happy Birthday, Mr. President, courtesy of Jean-Louis couture.

I think of the poets and the playwrights, Shakespeare, Eliot and Yeats and so many more, who seemed so transcendent in my youth,and then I think, or rather I know with great sadness, that fewer and fewer people read and will be educated in such a way that these writers will ever matter again.

And what about our achievements in terms of perfecting the human body, those who have strived to reach the highest levels of physical aptitude? Well then I think about poor Marion Jones in jail. I read this week's Economist and am reminded of the Olympics in Mexico City 1968, Munich 1972, and what may yet happen in Beijing 2008.

We're just like any other athletes, dying young. Well. Younger than we thought we would, considering we thought we were immortal. The Rolling Stones are one of our best stabs at Boomer holiness, they will go on and teach the younger generations what it is to grow old, and what it can be, physically at least. Mick will strut and fret his hours upon the stage, and outdo all others. He'll be irreverent. He'll break rules and keep some. We can't hope for a whole lot more, out of the ashes of our generation's youth, than what old Mick Jagger does, and did. That's exaggerated, but he made people happy and brought them together. Martin Scorcese says the Stones' music helped him him through many a troubled time, and Scorcese will honor them with his upcoming movie.

Mick Jagger honored his father, took him along to Buckingham Palace when he became Sir Mick Jagger. He may have coveted and adulterated a wife or two, but he didn't kill anyone. That's at least a few of the Ten Commandments. He's got an awful lot of energy, it's got to count for something good. I wish I had it. This little flame on the side of my head feels a little better when I think of Mick Jagger. Which figures, since that side is associated with recall of music and art, albeit, if lesions, then losses.

So I rub the side of my head and wonder what's going to go next. No worries about the impulse to perform socially unacceptable acts, or to form new longterm memories worth acting upon, never mind, that's on the other side. I had a killer fever there long long ago. Next to go will be remembering who-the-heck-are the Rolling Stones.

My Master's in Psychology sticks with me enough that I know none of this temple rubbing and frontal lobe localized fever-stuff is really true. But it's fun to speculate about. Like old Heads used to do.

I'll just sit here and wait it all out. Luckily I don't mind playing solitaire.

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And for those who didn't make it:

"To an Athlete Dying Young" by A. E. Housman

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.

Hurlyburly

Been there and done that? Love the Dennis Hopper ads about hanging on to your dreams? Still love the music and all the folks who are hanging in there? But do you ever feel those pearly gates getting closer and start to think that it's too late, that we missed the boat, that we're on the way out, that Georgie-Porgie made us cry and that with the upcoming presidential election and our aging bodies and minds- this isn't shaping up to be any Age of Aquarius?

The new generations, our offspring, mind you, are doing fine. They've outdone us in certain ways, they've had the fruits of our labors to spur them on. But they're curious about us. They (occasionally) want us to share what we know- especially from the safe distance of a blog, and not when we have them trapped in our car.

We remember when cyberspace was just a dream, the next generation is immersed in it. We sought to be authentic and to change the world, they wonder what exactly we mean by that. Most of them will never know what it was like to start things from scratch the way we did: to learn reading, writing, 'rithmetic, get a classical education, to think in broad terms of distinct civilizations and cultures. Social policies have subtly altered some of the most fundamental learning processes and are almost surely affecting evolutionary patterns. Genealogy charts are interesting, but to what end? It's a brave new world, a glorious mish-mash. There's been a mutation in mankind, don't you think? It's hard to define, but whatever it is, it would show up on a graph a million years from now.

We're different from the dignified WWII veterans and Holocaust survivors who have sat and reminisced for Steven Spielberg and other documentarians- We are Vietnam-era, issue-sensitized, drug-culture survivors. It definitely doesn't have the same ring. Nowhere near as many WWII vets ended up drug-addled and overly tattooed on Harleys or blank-eyed in wheelchairs at Saturday flea markets. God knows, many dignified Vietnam vets have exemplary, successful and fulfilling lives and may drive Harleys and work flea markets, but you know of the ones who didn’t feel like heroes, and didn’t succeed. The unfortunate stereotype is out there. And how do you think our Iraq veterans will fare as the years unfold? If the scenes and stories of neglected veterans at Walter Reed Hospital are any indication, we're not learning from our mistakes.

For all its strengths, our boomer generation has been strident and self-righteous at times. Some of us got cheapened and weakened - albeit temporarily-by our culture, by some of our shrill and misguided liberal policies, by the assassination of our beautiful young leaders, and by a relaxation into faithlessness and a consequent lack of discipline that nearly lost us the battle of our lives. But we had the best music, didn't we? And so many of our musicians are still kickin' and inspiring new generations. Wasn't it Mick Jagger who once said that people over forty may as well die? If so, he sure changed his mind about that! He's struttin' and frettin' his hours upon the stage, mighty strong and alive as he nears 65, doing us all proud.

Youth won't marginalize us if we use their tools to go on helping to broaden their worlds. We can still leave so much behind, even just sitting at our computers- whether we have blood-pressure meds and anti-coagulants on the shelf, or running shoes and turmeric. Step into the hurly-burly.