Just like the ones I used to know
Dec. 18th, 2022 03:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brin_bellway[cw: Christmas, (mild) illness, (arguably) apocalypse]
The Christmas songs on the radio try so hard to pretend that they are timeless. That, through them, you are connected to an eternal tradition, stretching back across countless centuries.
But when I listen to the lyrics, really *listen*, the illusion shatters. The words are like sedimentary layers of time, crystallised ways of life that, not only I, but the *Christmas-observers around me*, will never know. They rock at their dance clubs; they shop at five-and-dimes; they use horse-drawn transportation; they herd sheep. "Deck the Halls" is *so* archaic that the very *language* is losing intelligibility: the radio team rarely bothers to include the lyrics anymore, just plays instrumental versions.
It is so desperately lonely, to be the only generation that has ever lived as we do.
---
My first impulse is a jealous longing, for a stable world where one year echoes the next and the previous, for a life with rhythm.
But this, too, is in part an illusion. The world of their festival music is idealised. The real people did get to know their worlds in a way that we never do, but they also grew intimately acquainted with all the ways their worlds could go wrong. I have not known famine, or pillaging; I have known less plague than they, even now, and am less helpless against it; I know fewer of the everyday iniquities of life, and may yet know fewer still.
My whole society is like my verbal employment contract writ large. Sacrifice stability, sacrifice routine, set yourself adrift on the winds of change; in exchange, we will give you wealth, and the security that wealth can buy.
(Today is the beginning of Hanukkah. I am writing this on break between the segments of my seven-hour split shift. I did not ask for the day off.)
---
I hope someday we figure things out. I hope someday the awkward gangling of our adolescent civilisation settles into a mature state, and life grows stable again. Not *too* quickly--I want to be around to enjoy it--but someday, I hope we have a world that we can truly get to know.
The Christmas songs on the radio try so hard to pretend that they are timeless. That, through them, you are connected to an eternal tradition, stretching back across countless centuries.
But when I listen to the lyrics, really *listen*, the illusion shatters. The words are like sedimentary layers of time, crystallised ways of life that, not only I, but the *Christmas-observers around me*, will never know. They rock at their dance clubs; they shop at five-and-dimes; they use horse-drawn transportation; they herd sheep. "Deck the Halls" is *so* archaic that the very *language* is losing intelligibility: the radio team rarely bothers to include the lyrics anymore, just plays instrumental versions.
It is so desperately lonely, to be the only generation that has ever lived as we do.
---
My first impulse is a jealous longing, for a stable world where one year echoes the next and the previous, for a life with rhythm.
But this, too, is in part an illusion. The world of their festival music is idealised. The real people did get to know their worlds in a way that we never do, but they also grew intimately acquainted with all the ways their worlds could go wrong. I have not known famine, or pillaging; I have known less plague than they, even now, and am less helpless against it; I know fewer of the everyday iniquities of life, and may yet know fewer still.
My whole society is like my verbal employment contract writ large. Sacrifice stability, sacrifice routine, set yourself adrift on the winds of change; in exchange, we will give you wealth, and the security that wealth can buy.
(Today is the beginning of Hanukkah. I am writing this on break between the segments of my seven-hour split shift. I did not ask for the day off.)
---
I hope someday we figure things out. I hope someday the awkward gangling of our adolescent civilisation settles into a mature state, and life grows stable again. Not *too* quickly--I want to be around to enjoy it--but someday, I hope we have a world that we can truly get to know.
