I was born in 1954 and I remain transfixed by the 1950’s in America. I get the feeling that I’m not alone in this fascination. What the hell is it?
In this photo I’m posting I am so dapper and the furniture surrounding me is completely au courant for the time. I have that marble table in my living room today. It’s completely cool.
I try to fathom my obsession with things of the era, like Peter Gunn, New York painters of the 50’s, jazz of the era, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Route 66, Marilyn, Tennessee, Jack.......it goes on and on. My hindsight sees an explosive innocence fused with revolutionary fever and poetic intelligence raised on the streets of New York City.
In my little Middletown it was the drip, drip, drip down of culture causing my mom to put that tie on me, to buy a white leather couch and Danish chair and sleek, minimal marble coffee table. I love it all.
The snobs who prefer the centers of culture do not understand that the universe vibrates in large bands of experimentation and accumulation and transformation and that even in the hinterland of America the bee-bop bing-bang of earthly metamorphosis arises in ways unexpected and unknowable.
Mom and Dads Danish Modern couch chair end tables and coffee table lived in our house for years....it was painful to pass it down to our daughter...she lived with it for years...finally it went to a thrift shop and was snatched up within minutes. We are not alone.
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