Tag Archives: dated

Day by Day

Day by Day: (adj) taking place each day; daily

My children and grandchildren have a favorite word they use in the midst of discussing entertainment and music from former times.

The word is “dated.”

Once that word is spoken aloud into the chat, they are convinced that the material is no longer relevant, and may even have been “corny” or too simplistic in its inception.

I understand it is the prerogative of every generation to ravage the art, reactions of the previous.

It’s just that with the turning of the present screw, I’m not quite sure what’s the driver.

What is determining cultural thinking?

And what is being abandoned under the guise of progress?

One afternoon, I played the soundtrack from the Broadway musical, Godspell, for my young ones. The music from that particular experience still stirs me and reminds me of a time when protesting Vietnam led to objecting to stupidity, which welcomed a search for wisdom.

In the midst of that, the nation experienced what was referred to at the time as the “Jesus Movement.”

I’m not going to use this article to either analyze nor defend that brief time in our history. All I wish to say is that a song from that Godspell musical, in my mind, personified the mood of the nation from 1971 to pre-election 1972.

Day by day

Day by day

Oh, dear Lord

Three things I pray

To see thee more clearly

Love thee more dearly

To follow thee more nearly

Day by day

It was so common and uncomplicated that it took the air from the room.

I still weep when I hear it, conjuring memories of my own time and also the sheer joy that encompassed the congregated whenever it was sung.

I enjoy much of today’s music and today’s entertainment.

I am not stuck in the past.

But I am cemented into some convictions—one of them being the power in believing that good things can be achieved … day by day.

 

Dated

Dated: (adj) out-of-date; old-fashioned

Oily tongues and greasy lips.

This would be my description of the verbiage that comes off the mouths of those settlers who presently have found their place on the prairie of Earthscape.

Everyone thinks they are so smart.

Everyone believes they’ve invented the wheel—but they don’t want to call it the wheel. That’s too dated.

So instead they call it the “circlebon.”

And they smirk, as if cleverness has found a permanent home in their hearts.

I just hate it when a song is played and it’s beautiful, powerful, emotional—and people sit around and discuss how the production is so “dated” that it’s difficult to listen to.

Or they’ll watch a movie and call it dated. Yes—it is dated. It was produced on a particular date.  Traveling into the future to produce it later was impossible.

They took what they had, what they knew, what they felt, what they believed, and they put it on a screen. So without you commenting on the camera work or the lighting, or whether the credits were done in your favorite font, could you simply just bring your soul and let it ease down into the warm waters of the experience?

No?

I understand.

Just please take your oily tongue and your greasy lips elsewhere.

I don’t care if something is dated.

I want to know if it can touch me, if I can feel something real and if it inspires me to find the better parts of my humanity—instead of becoming a gorilla with a weekend pass to the suburbs.