Blog
Eras
Thursday 1 November 2001
It’s finally sunk in.
Back on the first of January 2000, even with the rollover of the Great Year Odometer, the world didn’t seem any different.
“It’s a funny feeling,” I wrote then, “knowing that I and the rest of my relatives will bear a year starting with ‘2’ on their tombstones. You don’t usually think of your grandma being part of the 21st century - but she is, as much as you are…
“And it’s funny to think of that state of mind we had - I’m not sure when it’ll fully leave… the feeling that on the stroke of midnight, 31 Dec 1999, all the brick buildings in the world would turn to glass, all the cars would turn into airships, all the planes to rockets and the subways to maglevs…”
And again in 2001, it still didn’t feel like a new century.
Last night, we were at my grandmother’s place having dinner, and watched the first couple of innings of Game 3 of the World Series in New York City. And finally, it felt like The Future: George W. Bush throwing the first pitch - probably the longest minute in the entire lives of most of the security people there, the patriotic messages and memorials, the ads for United Airlines and gene-research firms, the jet flyovers…
I always used to mentally picture the decades as a series of impressions of colour and tone and shape, running from left to right, the synthesis of many visual memories of images and styles. For the 20th century, the years up to about 1930 were sepiatoned, then black and white and pale blue. The Thirties were deep wine red, the Forties black and white and deeper blue. The Fifties were sunny yellow and pink and white, the Sixties bright primary red and white, shading into psychedelic paisley purples and dark reds. The Seventies were pale yellow and off-white, then darkened to the sleek boxy black of consumer electronics in the early Eighties. Pastels and silvers and rough, chaotic textures followed in the Nineties.
In 2000 I wrote: “The 2000s were a blank slate, a great unknown. But I do remember it was white, shiny, gleaming, green, hopeful.
“Now I’d like it to be vast, multicoloured, joyous, rooted, honest, bright, rich.”
We’ll see…