“Rob, Among other definitions From the New Oxford American Dictionary: decadent: "luxuriously self-indulgent." What are these kids if not luxuriously self-indulgent? I guess the word I'm leaving out is "knowingly." Can you be self-indulgent if you don't know you're being self-indulgent? In other words, is it a crime that requires intent? If you did that you'd be guilty as charged, but I'm not sure about them.”
That’s a very important point you make, Russ – the knowing.
Accepting that we are chatting about a pro video, that can by definition hardly be unknowing about its message, I think that when the message goes out to people like myself, certainly more than old and aware enough to ‘get it’, that what we see is a lost Eden. Perhaps it only ever existed within very tight and solvent groups – but the imagery is certainly also about lost innocence, even the theme of the song is based on the singer’s retrospective musings.
Where I live I am surrounded by boats; there must be zillions of pounds-worth of yachts sitting around the local marina, many with Se Vende writ large, but that doesn’t necessarily mean threatening bankruptcy: boats seem to be on sale right from the season in which they are bought. But what is missing here, always was, is the sense of youth and fun that the video projects. Especially youth. Fun? Never saw a lot of that, even though there was a decade when we spent a lot of time on those yachts, both in the marina and cruising. Money seems to buy the toys but not the joys.
Maybe it’s also a matter of scale. Small boats are one thing, but larger ones another. I can remember sitting up on the flybridge of a 25m Italian boat in Almeria when a much smaller boat came in to shelter. At the bow was a woman in a bikini, in her early thirties, dealing with the help ashore; the only other person on board was her male. On our boat, there was a crew of three. The owners, our friends, didn’t have the pleasure of the boat to themselves even when without guests. But the greater question is: did they really want that privacy?
This morning, at twenty to eight, I was standing in a cold queue outside the clinic awaiting my turn for a blood test. In front of me stood a young girl and her mother. It took my mind right off the needle. What I was looking at was my wife, as she was when we met in school. I couldn’t get my eyes off the kid. I felt guilty as hell, and even somewhat nervous in case it became noticeable to anyone else. Not that she was all that similar, facially, but the ‘look’ was there: a touch of the Veronica Lake hair, the lovely teeth, damn it, I lost half a century and more. Is it any wonder that watching a video can bring back a false fantasy memory of a youth I never actually had?
What is real?
Rob C