published in 2014 on my tumblr
I was born at the beginning of one of the best decades in human history. Sure, you had the Cold War raging for the first half of it, you had the Intifada starting, the war in Afghanistan and the Chernobyl disaster. But you also had unprecedented economic growth. You had the relatively peaceful downfall of one of the most noxious doctrines to hold part of Europe in its grasp. You had the birth of the technology that builds the foundation of today’s high tech society. And due to the economic growth and the social shifts, you had the elevation of entertainment to the status of an American and indeed an almost International God (in the sense of Neil Gaiman’s novel).
The famine in Ethiopia gave birth to Live-Aid, arguably the greatest musical event since Woodstock. You had big hair rock’n’roll bands enthralling millions alongside synth pop and a wave of disco that still fills the dancefloors. You had Michael and Madonna. You had crazy devil-may-care fashion. You had Terminator and E.T. and Star Wars and Indiana Jones and Back to the Future writing movie history. You had Dallas and the A-Team and Cheers and McGyver and more cult series than I care to remember or google take over the TVs. You had Transformers and Ninja Turtles and the birth of the legendary Simpsons.
And most importantly, you had a lift of spirits and a breath of hope. Most of the Western hemisphere partied not like there was no tomorrow, but as if it owned all of tomorrow. The 80s and early 90s were probably the best years to grow up in that I could’ve wished for.
Except for one minor detail. I was born on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain. I was born in a realm where time had stood still, where the colors were drained from every-day life, where the sounds were hushed lest they should attract unwanted attention, where the carefree joie de vivre was reserved for the ominous puppeteers and where entertainment was provided by the party, for the party and under strict supervision by the party so that it instilled party visions in the nineteeneightyfouresque soldier ants it was attempting to raise.
I don’t find the Kim Jong Il jokes cruising around the internet half as funny as my giggle might suggest. Because I have felt the bitter grain of truth behind them. Because I remember endless hours spent in queues in order to be able to buy rationed sugar or toilet paper (and I remember the feel of crumpled newspaper on my ass when toilet paper wasn’t to be had). I remember being hastily hushed by my grandmother when asking perfectly logical questions, because they might be interpreted as signs of an unhealthy upbringing. I remember spending evenings by candle-light and oil lamps because of national powercuts. I remember when there was only one TV program coming out of that darn box – and that one only ran for two hours a day. I remember endless waiting to pick up a package sent by relatives in Western Europe for Christmas and having to powerlessly surrender fifteen chocolates out of twenty to the customs officer – and those five chocolates that remained were all you’d have till the Easter package. Thankfully, I am too young to also remember the frequent parades to hail the leaders, the hours of party doctrine or the forced voluntary labor (it sounds absurd, but that’s what it was) in fields and farms.
So… yes, the 80s and their glamor breezed past and I wasn’t even aware of their existence behind the curtain. And the 90s settled in very timidly on a country in turmoil after it had shaken off the worst of its plagues – or so it thought at the time. The disastrous state of the economy and the general confusion of its citizens that had no idea what to do with their new-found and poorly understood freedom made most of the 90s whoosh by just as unnoticed.
As soon as I figured myself and world around me out, I tried to plunge in that world that foreign magazines and MTV and newly discovered pen-pals from around the world showed me, but I was a bit like a fly banging its head on a window-pane. The feeling of the 80s and early 90s was something that had to be lived to be completely understood. Trying too late and with too little means to recapture it once it was gone was doomed to fail. It is pretty much like being at a concert versus seeing it on TV or like enjoying the rides in an amusement park versus getting a postcard from there.
I am aware of several things missing in my life and most of them are experiences I wish I had had at the right time. An attempt to recreate them cannot succeed – I am not the person I was ten or fifteen or twenty years ago. I cannot fill any of those voids with anything but cheap surrogates. And due to the lack of key experiences from that list, I feel that I, as I should or want or strive to be, will be forever incomplete.
