Writer's Block: Day of German Unity

[fajrdrako]

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Nostalgic for a war? Are you kidding?

This has to be a question from someone who doesn't remember the Cold War.

The Cold War wasn't always Cold. I remember newly-arrived draft dodgers coming and doing household work for my parents, with body parts missing. (I admired them so much! Heroes.) I remember a sense of frustration with the world - all that fighting and squabbling and fear. Things do not look simpler in retrospect. The instability now and the instability then? Not that much difference.

Sadly, I was thinking about this yesterday: how it all feels like the same old battles being fought over the same old things for the same old reasons by the same sorts of people. Back in the sixties, I really believed that my generation could improve the world. Give peace a chance. Imagine there's no heaven.

Paul McCartney thrilled me by advocating peace in his concert in Israel a week ago. What happened to all the anti-war songs? Are people still writing them?

What good do I remember coming out of the Cold War? James Bond novels and movies. (We still have those.) I once during that era read a rather cool spy novel in translation, in which the hero-spy was Bulgarian... wish I could remember the name of the spy, the author, or the book. The Cold War was a factor in The Professionals, too.

Comments

[cynonymous.livejournal.com]

Drive-by friendsfriends-ing:

John Fogerty's recent album "Revival" has some pointed anti-Bush (and anti-war) songs. It sounds like he's pretty angry. From Long Dark Night:
"George is in the jungle, knockin' on your door, come to get your children, wants to have a war..."

I spent my Cold War childhood and early adulthood wondering when (not if) the planet would be vaporized in a nuclear (not nukular) holocaust. Lots of movies about this, including The Day After and Fail-Safe (1964). Fun times? Not so much. I wonder if my memory of that is what makes it so hard for the current administration to scare me about the terrorists -- unlike global nuclear annihilation, which would kill everyone eventually through radiation poisoning or starvation from nuclear winter, the odds are pretty slim (since I live in a small town) that I'll be killed or injured in a terrorist attack.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Glad you dropped by!

"George is in the jungle, knockin' on your door, come to get your children, wants to have a war..."

I spent my Cold War childhood and early adulthood wondering when (not if) the planet would be vaporized in a nuclear (not nukular) holocaust.

Me too. And by my mid-teens I was pretty sure civilization would fall through overpopulation or economic collapse. I would have been astounded to hear we'd last this long. And I never anticipated the resurge of wars based on religion.

You're so right about how terrorists are not very scary in comparison.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

You're so right about how terrorists are not very scary in comparison.

Au contraire. I find it disturbing that they might get their hands on nuclear stuff. They're unpredictable and have an eschatology that means they don't think death is a big deal.

[nuptse.livejournal.com]

Heh. Yeah. I was lamenting the other day how without the cold war, the romance of spytrade isn't what it used to be.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

You're right - we need a better class of spies. S.H.I.E.L.D.! U.N.C.L.E.! UNIT!

[duncanmac.livejournal.com]

In this day and age? After the FBI had Louis ("no bad news") Freeh running it, and the CIA was not much better off? [I don't want to think about who is running CSIS.]

[elebridith]

From a German point of view - NO. Uh... how can someone miss a war? And no, I don't want the divided days back.(Some real die-hard thickheads do. *snort*) I can very clearly remember how ecstatic and joyful we felt when we heard that the Berlin Wall opened, when a people's movement tore down a government. I felt pride for my country.
So please, no nostalgia for war days...

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Some real die-hard thickheads do.

At first glance, this surprised me. Then I realized it shouldn't. There's always someone - !

[rustydog.livejournal.com]

People are still writing anti-war songs. They're not mainstream, though. I imagine it would be career suicide for an artist on a major label to protest The War. (The Dixie Chicks seem to have survived, but I know people who are still boycotting them.) In my experience you have to look pretty hard, in acoustic/folk singer/songwriter type places, live performances in small venues. I hear them because my local public radio station broadcasts a coffeehouse performance every week. Danny Schmidt, Susan Werner, Greg Brown, Richard Shindell, Ellis Paul, and David Wilcox are artists who are likely to have war protest songs, though they might or might now be on albums. (You can listen to Susan Werner's "My Strange Nation" here (http://www.susanwerner.com/music/m_msn.html) - it's sort of a protest song (not solely about war) that wants to be optimistic at the same time.)

The only clear memory I have of the Cold War is when it ended. I understood what a momentous thing it was, and from reading and films (satire can be so powerful!) I have recognized, like you're saying, our repeating patterns. Sigh.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Love your icon! Perfect!

Thanks for the Susan Werner link. I'm glad to hear people are still writing anti-war songs, horrified to hear they're not getting air time. It shouldn't matter that some people wouldn't like it. That's the whole point.

Sigh.

[auriaephiala.livejournal.com]

I'm definitely with you. Don't they remember shivering when Ronald Reagan made those sick jokes about his finger on the button?

I knew draft dodgers from the Vietnam WAr: they gave up a lot to protest a stupid, unnecessary war.

I remember how countries like Cambodia and Laos suffered because an American government was fixated on the domino theory. I also remember the news stories of what really happened in East Germany and Romania during the Cold War: people terrorized by their own secret police, in the name of a people's republic. And the Gulags in the Soviet Union.

And learning later that a watchful Soviet technician just barely averted a Launch-on-Warning nuclear strike in the 1980s. Or that the U.S. and the Soviets were a lot closer to nuclear holocaust than we knew in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

It was a horrible time.

There was some excellent spy fiction (John Le Carre, Len Deighton) coming out of the Cold War, and even better films (Alec Guinness in _Tinker, Tailer, Soldier Spy_, Michael Caine in the Harry Palmer movies). But that doesn't make up for the reality.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Don't they remember shivering when Ronald Reagan made those sick jokes about his finger on the button?

Shudder.

I also remember the news stories of what really happened in East Germany and Romania during the Cold War: people terrorized by their own secret police, in the name of a people's republic. And the Gulags in the Soviet Union.

There are lots of nasty regimes around still (and we could name them) and places where chaos and violence are the rule. But things weren't better then; just different. And different mostly in details.

Danger and fear are always good material for fiction. It doesn't mean there's anything worhtwhile about experiencing them. And it's anything but simple!

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

I remember being taught in middle school that at any random moment, nuclear war could break out and we'd all die horribly. I don't miss that at all.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

No, really, it's not a happy memory. Especially with the lurid speculation on what would happen then, after the end of the world, and what it would all feel like. I'm not saying people talked about this - my imagination dealt with it only too well!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_medley_/]

Nostalgic for the seeming simplicity of... *boggles* Let me just add my two cents to the NO chorus. 1984 stands out in my mind as the year I was most certain mankind wasn't going to make it to party like it was 1999. I was fourteen, "The Day After" was on TV, we were reading some post-nuclear-holocaust novel in English class, and Reagan was being...Reagan. Not nostalgic for that at all, thanks.

Although I am kinda nostalgic for the spy novels.

(Also, I just saw in your profile that your LJ username is Esperanto. *geeks out happily*)

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I was fourteen, "The Day After" was on TV, we were reading some post-nuclear-holocaust novel in English class, and Reagan was being...Reagan.

Ouch! You got a triple dose. Scary. It's a wonder our psychological scars aren't worse.

Spy novels, however, are good things.

Jes, 'fajrdrako' vere estas Esperanta vorton. I get a great kick out of using Esperanto whenever I find (or make) the chance.

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

I was 19 at the time. Thatcherism was the chief horror we were living with. Somehow, even with her and Ronnie's love-ins, the nuclear threat seemed more remote than way she and her pals were screwing the entire social fabric of the country.

[sollersuk.livejournal.com]

I've never been nostalgic for that one (I remember the Cuban crisis too well, thank you very much; I didn't know then how close run a thing it was, but when I found out later it didn't surprise me) but I grew up nostalgic for the one I just missed: we had dreariness, Austerity, bomb sites, rationing including the ultimate insult of bread rationing and no spirit of "Britain can take it", just miserable anticlimax.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

we had dreariness, Austerity, bomb sites, rationing including the ultimate insult of bread rationing and no spirit of "Britain can take it", just miserable anticlimax.

I can recall reading about British rationing when I was little, and feeling a sort of mix of admiration and wonder and pity.

My mother used to tell me she felt guilty during World War II because the only real hardship she had to undergo was going to dances with all the handsome soldiers who were about to go overseas. She knew how serious the war was; but the Depression made much more of an impact on her life.

My father was with the Navy in England and I'm sure she worried about him, but she never talked about it.

[walkingowl.livejournal.com]

Because of the Cold War, we had Mission: Impossible. I remember the revival in the late 80s, with Greg Morris's so Phil Morris as part of the cast, as well as my youthful crush Jim Phelps there once again in full glory (with white hair -- but O, that face!). This show lasted only two seasons, I think. In its second one, the Wall came down. It was utterly delicious synchronicity. At least one of the episodes deviated from the old standard "Eastern European accents equal Bad Guys" black/white thing, and I was thrilled to see it. Great fun in the real world, yup.

Nostalgic for a former era when other people were the adults and we ourselves didn't have to be concerned with making the hard decisions, yeah, maybe. But even so. Please!

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I figure there are always wars, and if there isn't a war involving 'us' (however we might define that), there's conflict or tension with someone somewhere. The best thing to do is to learn to live our individual lives as peacefully as possible and never do anything to encourage a war.

[coalboy.livejournal.com]

The Midnight Special, that I keep touting, plays anti-war stuff every week. See Rich's website midnightspecial.org for the playlist.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'll look. Thanks!

[myfavouriteplum.livejournal.com]

Nostalgic for spy fictions, definitely. Cold War is so fascinating as a concept, a political symbol. But for the actual war itself, no.

I was born in 1984 (you can say that's born under bad metaphor~), so I don't remember much about Cold War, not even the end of it. China was on equally bad terms with either of the superpowers during most of the cold war (Mao was somehow eager to impress Stalin but fell out with his successors), so it should have been scary(not that I know anything about it). My father used to tell stories about playing in dugouts in his childhood, which mostly consisted of climbing up and down, since they didn’t have anything else to play with anyway. It was not allowed, naturally, so the children were afraid of being locked up in the place by unknowing porters, but this provided a thrill too. Once he broke an arm, falling when he hurried to climb up because they heard somebody coming. He always wondered whatever happened to the boy under him, I mean, the one he landed upon...

I've been to Berlin once. It’s in winter, so the city looked gloomier and emptier than I’d thought(I'd say almost depressing), as if there's still old scar barely buried somewhere in it--well, pardon my melodramatic thinking. I found Checkpoint Museum very touching too(I cried, to say the truth). The pain was still so tangible in some way, which I respect. So no, not feeling nostalgic at all.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Cold war really does make for good storytelling, especially for those of us who don't like war stories. If you don't have open war, you have a lot of deviousness going on, and that makes for good plots.

Born in 1984 - ! That must make it a good year. Actually, now I think of it, it was a rather bad year for me - I think that was the year I had Epstein-Barr and did yoga every day for a year, until I felt better. No: nothing bad war-related, just personal health issues.

I find it rather encouraging how kids can lay anywhere, any time - war doesn't dull their instincts. And neither does a Cold War.

Berlin sounds dramatic and depressing. I'd like to see it one day.