Yesterday I discovered Playa Cofi Jukebox, an Internet radio station that lets listeners time travel back to any year from 1950-1982 to hear a rotation of the top 100 songs from that year. I immediately jumped to 1965 and was transported to my all-time favorite musical year. Go look at that link and see if you can think of any year that has more fantastic hits. What year do you most identify with musically? While I natter away about 1965 always substitute your favorite year and remember your songs.
I’ve been wishing for such an invention for a long time now. Actually, I’d even like to pick the month and year, but I’m overjoyed to have a by year destination for now. I’ve often daydreamed of collecting music with an idea of creating playlists on my computer so I could fake late night radio shows I heard in my kid days while discovering science fiction books.
I’d love to hear the old WQAM and WFUN AM stations from 1961-1967 Miami – and poking around the Internet shows that other people remember those stations with lots of fond nostalgia too. I’m guessing there is something in our biochemistry that burns the pop culture of our teen years into our brains so nothing else ever seems as exciting.
I often reread the books I discovered in 1965 – mostly the twelve Heinlein juveniles that were first published in the 1950s. The books still move me as much as the music. But I have discovered when I see TV shows from that year like Lost in Space, Green Acres, I Dream of Jeannie, The Wild Wild West and Get Smart I have to wonder if I wasn’t simple-minded back then. I know that science fiction and rock music back then wasn’t that sophisticated either, but they feel like art today whereas the television shows seem silly.
I have to wonder how much of the 1965 me is still stored in my brain? Physicists still grapple with the concept of time, some even theorize that time doesn’t exist – suggesting that we live in a continual succession of nows. I know my old brain now is much different from my young brain then, but I’m guessing much of the same programming and circuitry still exist. If I put on 1965 on the Playa Cofi jukebox and start reading Starman Jones by Robert A. Heinlein how close can I get to the original experience? Time appears to be change, but what is changing?
What if I had a brain injury or Alzheimer’s and did this experiment? What if I could move back to my old house in Miami. Would it feel like 1965? Would I feel like I’m 13 and something really bad happened to my body?
Why do science fiction writers and readers love the concept of time travel? Wouldn’t time travel also involve space travel? Wouldn’t we have to jump in a space ship and go back to the coordinates of where Earth was forty-three years ago? (Oddly The Shangri-Las was singing “I Can Never Go Home Anymore,” And “Turn! Turn! Turn!” by the Byrds just started playing. Very appropriate songs for this essay. What synergy with 1965.)
The Earth has gone around the Sun forty-three times, and the solar system has moved around the galaxy, and the Milky Way has moved in whatever direction it is heading, and the Universe is expanding. It’s damn hard to believe that time travel will ever be possible, but it’s also hard to imagine that time does not exist either.
The question I really should ask myself: Why would I want to time travel to 1965? Is it because I had so much fun listening to WQAM and reading Heinlein and watching The Man From U.N.C.L.E. on television? Don’t we all time travel every day when we turn on our TVs and watch movies from the past hundred years?
What is something I couldn’t do now, that I could do then? For one thing, I could go see Bob Dylan perform during the height of his talent. (“Mr. Tambourine Man” just started playing after I typed the words Bob Dylan – this is getting spooky.) How important is that? What does it tell me? I guess I’d like to do all the things back in 1965 that I didn’t do the first time around but wanted to so badly. (The Animals just started singing “We Gotta Get Out of this Place.”)
And I think the Animals song is informative. I think one of the basic urges for time travel is the same as space travel, we just want to go somewhere in space-time where we think it’s better. Was 1965 really a better place? (Jesus, this is starting to weird me out, Sonny and Cher just started singing, “Baby Don’t Go.”) Maybe they’re right, now is the only place that counts.
This makes me wonder how many science fiction fans would jump at a chance to go somewhere fantastic. If a powerful being suddenly appeared in your room right now and commanded: “Name a destination in the universe – any time, anywhere, and I’ll send you there right now” would you jump at the chance? (The Shangri-Las are back and singing, “The Leader of the Pack.” – Umm)
Let’s imagine I say, “Miami, 1965” – and pop I’m there. What would I do then? (I wished I had written “and clap I’m there,” because Shirley Ellis just started singing “The Clapping Song.”) The first thing I’d have to do is get out of my old house because my parents, who would be younger than me now, would find a stranger invading their house very scary. I’d be out on the streets and homeless.
(The Moody Blues just started singing “Go Now.” – I’m not making this up. If you could hear the song like I hear it, it has mystical thrills. It always had.)
The job of a time traveler is a tough one. At least in 1965 Miami, everyone speaks my language, but walking the streets with only the clothes on my back and a wallet full of funny money wouldn’t be an easy start to a new life. (I hear Joe Tex telling me to hold on to what I’ve got.)
A lot of science fiction stories starts with this very problem, remember John Carter arriving on Mars. But how many of us would buy a ticket to another city and start an adventure by being homeless. (The Four Seasons sings “Let’s Hang On” repeating and emphasizing the wisdom of Joe Tex “Let’s hang on to what we’ve got”)
I guess 1965 is telling me to stay home in 2008. What if I never owned a radio or discovered Heinlein in 1965? What if I had taken up sports instead and all my memories of 1965 would be about ball games – this essay would be about how I remember seeing some great games. Time is always something we did. The year 1965 is just a label I put on a period of my life when pop culture was very impressionable on my mind. For other people that might be 1983 or 1942, and all my fond memories would be meaningless to them. In forty-three years some guy is going to be writing about 2008 and his nostalgic memories of Rap music.
Last night my wife and I had a party at our house celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary and everyone sat around trying to remember 1978. Our wedding reception had been at my wife’s parent’s house, the house where we live now. And a number of people who had been there thirty years ago sat around looking at photos of the 1978 event. We sure do love to time travel. In 1965 I was terribly anxious to live in the 21st century. I wonder if I’ll ever live in a year that is the one I want to be living in?
The Four Seasons just started singing, “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right (The Wonder Who).” I think I spend too much time thinking twice. I can’t go home to 1965, but along the way time has eroded my desire to live in the future. I think reality has overtaken science fiction.
I keep waiting for The Rolling Stones to sing, “Time is On My Side,” which came out in late 64 and was popular in 1965. I need to get over looking backwards. What I really want from 1965 is a way to live looking forward again. I need to stop thinking about 1965, and start planning for 2065. Having a grand distant future inside of you waiting to unfold is the way to feel young again.
Jim
Auxiliary Memory 