The Last True Generation

Mine is the last true generation. It's all downhill after this.

I look at those poor wretches born after me, and think "they'll never know what it's like".

It all changed after me; after the glorious generation. 1982 was the year of revolution (fuck 68).

What do the kids of today know about the Falklands? They weren't there. They can never understand.

They never lived through Thatcher and the Poll Tax and Knightmare. They were born with mobile phones and the internet. I didn't have either until I was sixteen.

The last true conversational generation.

Modern teenagers have no rebellions to follow. I mean, they're rebelling against my generation (the last true rebellious generation), but that doesn't count. It doesn't.

Tupac is dead. Cobain is dead. Bill Hicks is dead.

Who do teenagers have to look up to now? Pete Doherty? A drug addict.

What? Yes, I know Cobain took drugs. And Hendrix. And Wilde. But they did it with so much more élan.

I don't see any heroes for the youth of today. What? Yes, I suppose the generation before me didn't care for my heroes either. They didn't understand. They couldn't judge my culture. They weren't young.

But I don't have to be young. I never became out of touch with what's cool and important. Huh? I don't know. Things must have just stopped being cool and important at some point. It's strange that it happened when I got old. It happened to my parents' generation. But for my generation the change is really there. It's genuine.

Ours is the last true generation of inspiration and truth and beauty, and subverting the first three.

I guess I'm just lucky. The end of a constant process - a process of artistic and cultural progress, development and exploration, lasting thousands of years. And it's all over. It just so happens to have occurred in my era - where I have a blog and can write about it.

What are the odds?