On-Ramps and Off-Ramps

 

It's only later in your life when you have access to both the side streets and the highways in your life. If you were born in the 1960s and an adolescent in the 70s, those are the side streets of your life. Then there's the highway of the 1960s.

I didn't access the highway in the 1960s until the late 1970s, at which time I was "on the road" with the other generations that have been on those roads for a long time, including the highway of the 1950s and 1940s. It wasn't until the mid-1980s that I actually started to be influenced by the 1960s when I started to write music. That's when the Beatles influence started to be a factor. It was all the accumulated experiences of being on the side streets and on the highways that put me permanently on the highway of the 1960s because I'm still influenced by that decade in art and music-making. I was never on the side street of the 1980s because I wasn't a child then. If you were born in the 1990s you're on the side street of the 1990s; You weren't on the highway of the 1990s. Millennials who were born in the early 1990s are now starting to get on the highway of the 1990s. If they're now musicians they're being influenced by that decade. To a large extent they're influenced by the 1980s, 1970s, and 1960s, and maybe even before, as we now have access to all that content on the internet. But you have to be both on a side street and a highway. As you get older you can go back to the side streets and that's what I've done frequently to revisit how songs were written and produced.

All the "interstates" have on-ramps and off-ramps. I have an off-ramp from the 1980s or 1990s to get back on the side streets and then go on the on-ramp of the 2020s just to check it out and see what the highway is like. But usually what happens with other older people is that new music is not very interesting (or useful) so you get on the highway for just a mile and you get back on other decade highways. Younger or middle-aged people are mostly on the highway of the 1990s or the 2000s. But you can go back on your side street and other highways. I particularly like the side street of the 1970s which is convenient to the highway of the 1980s or the highway of the 1990s.

Being a creative person is a navigation of on-ramps and off-ramps.

From an interview with Cenk Uygur: 

(Paraphrased): "There was a study or poll done in 2011 that showed that people above 65 for the last 20 years have been very conservative in American politics. One of the studies explained that it was because of Reagan. People are still holding on to that image of the conservative patriotic American and shining city on a hill. But back in 2011 for 85 and older it was actually the most progressive demographic because they remembered FDR. When they were growing up they were old enough that he was around and he was popular and he was successful so they stayed progressive through their whole lives."

Everyone gets on their political side street usually in grade school. That's when you at least know who the president is but you don't know the politics. It's only later when you get on the political interstates that you understand where they go and the kinds of things you see on them. Like I was influenced by the Beatles in the 1980s, you can be influenced by politics from many decades ago.

For the Silents who are still living and Boomers who had family members who lived under FDR, they have found nostalgia for that highway.