RICHARDSON: 'I wanna go back'
"When is the music gonna get back to ... simple and basic? Cuz I wanna go back to a time when the music touched your heart and your soul and your mind and your body! I wanna go back to a time when there were blue lights in the basement... Y'all know what I'm talking about.
"I wanna go back to a time when slow dancing was still in style, and when you got out on the dance floor you touched your partner — you didn't have to look for him ... I wanna go back to that time when the music made you feel like you wanted to fall in love, and you wanted to drive up to Lookout Mountain and still have enough mystery in it not to tell what you did when you got there ... I wanna go back."
— Gladys Knight, end of the Road Medley, 1994
I'm with Gladys. I wanna go back, too, and I'm sure I'm not alone. It's a feeling that we humans, generation after generation — and those generations to come — have wrestled with and will continue to struggle with for as long as we're on this planet. In the lyrics of another well-known song, "Everything must change, nothing stays the same ... No one stays the same, the young become the old and mysteries do unfold, cause that's the way of time, nothing and no one goes unchanged."
How we deal with change, particularly as we age, determines our happiness. We can choose to struggle with the change gorilla, but the ape always wins. It seems as we slow with age, the world around us speeds up and becomes more complex. But it's just not old fogies who hate change. We are all judged, many times in our careers and in our home lives, in how adaptable we are. Sometimes life stinks and we have to put our heads down and struggle through the tough times.
Those of us who can see the crest of the mountain can choose to look back at the "good old days" and try to recreate them. We can turn into curmudgeons and walk around mad at the world, or we can challenge ourselves to learn new things and take advantage of new technologies.
I know it's confusing. None of this smartphone, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram stuff was around in our youth, but we have to adapt. We still have a lot to offer this world, and we need to use technology to help spread our wisdom to those who need it in a medium they use and understand.
And there is another practical reason for keeping our brain cells alive and nimble. Our "good old days" are never coming back.
Later in Gladys' monologue, she talks about some of my favorite musical artists before launching into some of their songs: Nat King Cole, Billy Eckstein, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, the Four Tops, The Temptations, Teddy Pendergrass and the Spinners. But here's the deal: Nat, Billy, Marvin, three of the original Four Tops, Philippé Wynne of the Spinners, Teddy and four of the original Temptations, are all singing in the heavenly choir, a choir we'll all hear soon enough. Until that day, I wouldn't trade the times we've lived through for a peek at life in the future.
I started following politics when John F. Kennedy campaigned for president. I've been hooked ever since. Think of the times we've had (some good, some bad): Vietnam, the '60s, Watergate, President Clinton's impeachment over "that woman." We've started wars over whims based on lies and we've sent men to the moon and probes to Mars and Pluto. We've gone from computers that take up warehouse space to ones with more power that fit on our hips. We can beam live pictures around the world, and we can do that from our mobile phones. And oh, do I remember the music — and the disc jockeys who brought it to us?
What will the future bring? Don't know. I can tell you I probably won't like the music. Gladys was looking for a group to recapture the magic in '94 and she found Boyz II Men. I'm still looking for a new face and voice that can create the musical magic, in other words, one who can carry a tune. So far, not much luck. But I'll keep looking until they pry the tonearm on my relic of a turntable from my cold, dead hand.
Charles E. Richardson is The Telegraph's editorial page editor. He can be reached at 478-744-4342 or via email at crichardson@macon.com. Tweet@crichard1020.
This story was originally published November 14, 2015 at 3:17 PM with the headline "RICHARDSON: 'I wanna go back' ."