To add to C.P.'s remarks, one of the best things about being in that privileged generation was that we had an example -- in the Beatles -- of people being creative and changing and transforming themselves in extraordinary ways in public, and pushing their creative transformation through the wider society. We had that ongoing story, and I think it has affected most of that group since -- positively as role models, but also that constant dissatisfaction with what happened after, and the disappointment that everything didn't go on and keep transforming and changing at the same peak level (as if it could). I don't believe that any of us living through the sixties as teenagers thought, oh, this is great, people will be listening to this in 40 years; what we thought was, wow, this is a great start, what is going to happen next? How will we be changed? If anyone had told me that radio stations would be playing 60's records nonstop in 2001, and people would be looking back on the 60's as some great peak, I would have been disgusted and horrified.

I don't believe that this perspective is a normal aspect of any generation growing old: I have never sensed this in the ways of the older generations I had the privilege of growing up with: they had other stories and ways of being, other optimisms and pessimisms, other nostalgias, better in some ways, different certainly.

yours, Peter T.