I am returning home after midnight, After watching a Danish movie. It ends with two stick like figures - A father and son, waving and receding Across a field of wind swept snow.

Cicadas are awfully silent tonight. The only sounds are of dew settling Over grass, gelling it like hair, a car Carrying late night revelers, disturbing A bird or two in the trees I walk under.

What happened to the old father after The finis? Did he freeze in the middle Of shoveling food into his trap, hearing A sound, (his son’s voice?), across the fijord. And the young boy, the wannabe immigrant,

Did he find success in the other country - Amerika? What about love, did he find some? Or did he become the stranger who walks The city streets late nights, after watching films In languages he doesn’t understand,

Palms bunched in his pant pockets, Feeling the weight of weightless goodbyes He casually waved at people who are lost To the past, avoiding, for as long as possible, The pounding weight of un-peopled dreams, Which only an exile sees?

This was a fascinating document of the wave of change that swept the world, and more particularly America at the end of World War II catapulting it to become a super power (and now the only) at the end of 20th century. In it were captured the genesis of some of the changes we now live with, and perhaps suffer from. And here is a short, and imperfect, chronicle from my memory.

Invention of the mall: The first mall opened in this decade in Indiana and went on to become one of the conspicuous symbols of America – in the early trip made by my mother to 1990’s L.A during in my childhood, one of the experiences she was impressed by and had to report back to us, were the gigantic pleasure/gratification complexes she had encountered over here. In the medieval ages visitors were perhaps taken to visit the Gothic cathedrals. In this age malls serve the same social and religious function.

Simultaneous death of public transit and vital teeming downtowns, and the onward march of suburbs and interstates: It was fascinating to note that smooth highways were being minted almost concurrently as trolley and tram tracks were being torn up in cities across the country, a precursor to how people live and work in most American cities now.

Cold War: The beginning of polarization of the world into opposing camps – the capitalist and the communist, and the war between them leading to development of hydrogen bombs, guided missiles and other, to use the present day terminology, Weapons of Mass Destruction. Thus we opened the Pandora’s Box. This war between political ideologies has now been replaced with a war between ‘religious’ and ‘loosely religious’ ideologies – War On, a noun called, ‘Terror’/ ‘Jihad’. Possible positive side effects: space exploration, development of medical technology (organ transplant technology etc). Possible positive side effects of the current war: better understanding of the world, acceptance of other religious verities?

Mass manufacturing: China and other ‘third’ world countries do this for us now more cheaply.

Civil Rights Movement: Are all races equal, under God? The question remains, as do slight traces of guilt, shame and denial of history in the American South.

Joe McCarthy’s witch hunt: A periodic display of xenophobia towards those who are not like ‘us’ or who believe in stuff ‘we’ think is dangerous for ‘our’ way of life. In the current age mirrored by the raise of confidantes of God into positions of power and their crusades against the ‘godless/heretics’ all over the world.

Birth of Rock & Roll, Beats, and TV studios: A break from older (trussed up, corseted?) social tradition – without creation of an alternative, and hopefully better, tradition. Fifty years later for many people in America, actors on the TV sitcom ‘Friends’, are the only true friends they have.

Rise of ‘post’, ‘pre’ and ‘ism’ in the artistic landscape: Dadaism, modernism, post-modernism, abstract expressionism etc. Lost and dazzled by this maze, we, the proletariat, don’t know what is art and what is shit anymore. Thus Disney Corp perhaps, is the latest avatar of Michelangelo? And why read books in a hypertext and always connected world? Question: If the typical cartoon representation of the Stone Age folk is a hirsute underdressed man/ underdressed woman walking around, swinging a stone club, what is the equivalent 21st century representation? A hirsute underdressed man/ underdressed woman walking around with a cell phone, a hand raised to one ear.

Invention of the Pill: When one is freed from the consequence of one’s actions by popping a pill what happens? Sexual freedom has become meaningless, when it seems to be the greatest anxiety and neurosis, afflicting present-day America – on the Right, the Left and the Center.

Acceleration of the Age of Science: Are we any more ‘enlightened’ and happier than the ‘primitive’ man? Related question: What is the sound of one hand clapping?

If music, and dancing, serve to draw groups together and direct their emotions towards some common external goal, as E.O. Wilson points out – hip hop or rap, one of the most popular styles of current music, serves this purpose via a public display of anger, alienation and aggression.

Classical music, by drawing up the bridge of cash and hyper refined black tie snobbery, has put itself out of circulation for most of the younger generation. Besides since a significant part of this music originally served a religious function – in notable cases like J.S. Bach’s, it was almost exclusively music written for Church services – it serves none of the needs of Gen X, Y or Z, for whom religion is an old fogeyish superstition at best or a crutch from which one frees oneself at worst.

If the depiction of Mozart in the film ‘Amadeus’ is reasonably accurate, it is hard to imagine in the current time, that opera was once enjoyed (and was even accessible!) by (to) the common man.

The death of coherent communities leads to the death of aesthetic in music. For example rural black communities in America were joined together through the exercise of gospel music, to express suffering under oppression and sing of man’s yearning for redemption. Blues served the same function in the secular arena. Now we have rap and other forms of angry music taking their place. I find both these forms of music to be beautiful, and that they can be heard at an angle of repose, unlike the current avatar of music originating in the black experience – hip-hop.