On 23 July, in Madison, Wisconsin, USA, a man named Nicholas Hitchon died. He was 65. If you read this NY Times link, and I hope you do, you will find out that Mr. Hitchon was one of a group of school children who, in 1964, began to participate in what would become known as the Up Series. I will leave this part of the story for you to discover. Like, right now. Click this Wikipedia link before you read any further. . Click this link to watch the video of Mr. Hitchon. Do it.

The first instalment I saw was 28-Up, in 1991. The university from whence I graduated and subsequently worked featured an incredible art-house theatre that was legendary in Atlanta. One of the many, many perks of working there was free admission, so I would read the schedule and drop in after work. Remember, children, there were no portable devices or streaming computers in 1991, only dial-up, meaning, slow. Public theatres and VHS videos were the only way to watch films, and you were very lucky if you had an art-house theatre near you. I remember being almost alone in this theatre for this showing, and it changed my life. I immediately went hunting for the original, 7-Up, and all the subsequent series in my neighbourhood art-house VHS rental store and binged them.

These people are near my age. This would be the very last time in history that a filmmaker could capture children so candidly, children who didn’t understand how to work the medium, how to “pose” for the camera, how to construct a false, media-mediated persona. They were completely innocent, in a way that modern young people cannot even begin to comprehend. And so we have a candid snapshot of a generation. My generation. The transitional generation. A generation that would see societal and technological movements more rapid and profound and, literally, earth-shaping, than any generation before them and that any will see in the future. And one of them has now died. As a friend of mine said: “Our time is almost UP”.

The song choice is kind of silly, but I’m not stressing over these posts any more. Some will be coherent, some not so much. This one got ganked because I got stuck on the title of the album, which I couldn’t get out of my head: August and Everything After. I like the song, though I wonder why Counting Crows are as popular as they seem to be. I couldn’t name another of their songs.