It's weird. I'm weird, I suppose.

I'm watching a show about Who's Next and I've almost fainted. It feels like I've got a fever and my heart is pounding at a million miles an hour. I'm told that this is what being in love is like. But what am I in love with? Music, I suppose. An era in which I never belonged, but I feel like I do. I've never felt this way about the company I tend to keep. I don't even feel this way about my own family. But whenever I hear some particular songs, or see some particular videoclips, my heart pounds, and I feel like I'm about to melt. I like the people behind these songs, but there's something bigger than them that I love as well--their spirit, I suppose, to put it very cheesily. There's something about them that's just beyond anybody I've met in this time. There's some fiery, earthy, wild spirit about the Who, the Beatles, the Doors, that nobody else has today.

Nobody that I've met, anyway.

It's a wild, unitary, beautiful spirit that they possess and share between them. It's a spirit everyone else had at one time, too, but over time, in the past 40 years, everybody has tamed it and settled into what Pete called "spoon-fed" life, a life that everybody else wants them to live. But even today, the people who are left from that fantastically wild, bizarre, scattershot era have that spirit. Roger and Pete still have that craziness that they had back then; who cares if they're old enough to be my grandfathers? They have a spirit that people that are MY age don't have. They're old and batshit insane, but in a beautiful way. It's just... gone now. Everybody my age wants to settle in and live a life centered around money and material satisfaction. Nobody wants to take risks and chances and have a little fun in their life. But those old nutjobs--the hippies, the old beat poets, the leftover Yippies, the various twelve-cylinder wackaloons--they still live their lives according to their wild unrules.

I wish I lived back then. I imagine I would have a few friends if I did.

I don't fancy myself having such a wild, fiery spirit as they do; I imagine I have a more grounded, earthy spirit. Or a watery, tranquil one. But I wish I were around people who had fire in their hearts. Everybody's so dead now--whether they really ARE stuffed in a grave or whether they're walking down the street in the beautiful autumn sunshine. They have no animation in them. They shuffle and slump and stoop and don't have any enthusiasm for their lives.

But no matter how miserable some of these older folks are, they seem to be grateful to be alive and make the most of it. You meet an old lady these days and she's been skydiving, rock-climbing, hitchhiking across the desert, everything. But you'll talk to someone my age and their life experiences extend to the couch and the DVD player. They have no ambition and no desire to chase spirit, their heart, nothing. It makes me very sad to see that everybody has just given up, and the only people I have left to relate to are in their 50s and 60s and 70s.

And the girl who prefers to hang out with old-folks is a weird one, you know? So I keep to myself instead. Nobody really wants to be my friend because I'm so strange. I've TRIED, believe me, to make some friends my age, but nobody my age (at least, around these parts) is interested in philosophy, the environment, travel, GOOD music, or generally anything I'm interested in. People my age are interested in getting laid, getting wasted, or getting shitloads of money with which to accomplish these activities. I've very little interest in getting laid, getting wasted, or getting shitloads of money.

So that makes me even more of an outcast. I try to talk to people, try to encourage them to listen to their hearts or listen to The Note, or whatever... but they'll have none of it. They're more interested in What Jimmy Did With His Girlfriend or What's Going On At Taco Bell.

I often wish I could stumble into a magical portal back to 1967 or so, so I could be with people who would listen to me or at least notice that things beyond money and rap exist. But then it occurs to me--perhaps I've got a reason for being here and now instead of there and then. And that's what keeps me moving and grooving. Perhaps I DON'T have any deeper purpose. But I like to think I do.

I'm in love, head over heels, with something that isn't even physical or material.

Am I weird?