It's not just people that this happens to. Another thing I've started to notice is that I'll hear a song that sounds familiar, but it claims to be new. Then I realize that it's not a cover of a song I know, but the people playing it heard all the same stuff I did growing up and now they're making their own music so of course they're going to be influenced by what came before. They just happen to have the ability to make music while I do not. It's not much different than how we pick up the speech patterns of the people around us. We tend to mimic what we see and hear. The problem when it comes to music and movies though is that I've seen the original, or at least the original for me, and most of the new stuff feels like a pale imitator for some reason. I know that Han Solo wasn't the original roguish anti-hero, but for me he was my first instance where I understood that while he was a bit of jerk, he was actually a good guy, even if he didn't know it. In the thirty plus years since he was introduced there have been plenty of other iterations of that character type. You finally get to a point where the character you see is essentially the distilled version of Han Solo or Han Solo version 27. So you have kids today, who are growing up with Peter Quill as their version of Han Solo. That's not to say it's bad or anything because I like Peter Quill. It's just that I'm finding myself looking at both and saying to myself "Yeah the new guy is good, but you can't beat the original." Is this what getting older is going to be like?
I won't say that I've lived all over, but I've been a lot of places here in the U.S. I've lived in a few key places multiple times. Each of those places have been long enough that it's created a sort of context for all memories there. The problem though is that as time has gone on those start to get mixed up. I'll see someone who is out of context and my brain can't figure out what's going on. It's like seeing a friend from high school twenty years later while you're standing in line for lunch at your company cafeteria, which is two thousand miles away from that high school where you knew them. You know you know them from somewhere, but they aren't where they're supposed to be. I guess it's just something that happens when you move between the same few places over and over.
In less than a month I'm going to be traveling to someplace entirely new for me. While it won't be impossible for me to see someone there I know, it's highly unlikely. This is both exciting and a bit disorienting because after all this time there is a strange bit of comfort knowing that things will seem familiar most of the time. The problem with the familiar though is that it's entirely possible for it to eventually become boring. I've seen enough movies where it starts out with a character who seems like they're going through the motions. They have their routine down and the world is in order, but something isn't quite right. It's about this time in the movie that some wacky character storms in and shakes up their life or they are forced to go on some journey of self-discovery. Even that story feels familiar at this point, but this time it's my turn to go on that adventure. Next time you read this, it will be from somewhere halfway around the world and I'll be looking out at a crowd of people and knowing that I don't know any of them. It's time for a little unfamiliar.
