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Tuesday, September 07, 2010

"Move Your Body" - Caroline Lund



Sacramento's Labor Day Rainbow Festival, 2010 (see footnote):

[Footnote: Gabe says "And what is this I see? Mmmmmaaarrrccc! This is NSFW! But then I suppose that depends on what kind of boss you have. I tell you, I've had bosses who were really into that stuff! And some people HAVE accused me of being a refugee from a past century!"

Once again, I apologize for having crossed boundaries of impropriety. Like Gabe, I too am a refugee from a past century; namely, the late, lamented 20th Century. But unlike Gen-X Gabe, I come from that unrecognized generation that immediately followed the Baby Boomers: too young to get drafted into 'Nam, which separates us from the Boomers proper. I very much believe William Faulkner's dictum "The past is never dead. It's not even past."

Gabe's Gen-X past concerns his generation's struggle to escape the legacy of the Boomers, with their insatiable, narcissistic demands (I know, I know - I feel their insufferable weight too; I mean, who do you think paid for the excesses of the Boomers? It wasn't the Boomers, but rather, the WWII generation and the immediate post-Boomers!) Thus, the interest in new Orthodoxies of all sorts amongst the generation that came of age around 1990. My generation's struggle was of a different sort - coping with the Boomers' immediate aftermath. And our experiences are different, of course, from today's generation, dealing with the New Depression.

So, whereas today's generation might say "shake it like a Polaroid picture" (even that phrase is a few years out-of-date now) the Gen-Xer's might say "throw a blanket over it," whereas my 70's generation would say, "shake it, baby, shake it!"]

We are all refugees from the conflicted 20th-Century, and just like William Faulkner says, "The past is never dead. It's not even past."


Everybody, get on the floor, let's dance!
Don't fight your feelings, give yourself a chance!
Shake shake shake, shake shake shake,
Shake your booty! Shake your booty!
Oh, shake shake shake, shake shake shake,
Shake your booty! Shake your booty. ]

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