Revelry

New Years Eve almost requires sitting in front of the TV to watch the descent of the big glass ball over Times Square.  A transition ritual  About forty minutes worth for me.

While Guy Lombardo of my younger years conducted a nostolgic, lyrical Auld Lang Syne, the people who paid enough, or were important enough, to attend the Waldorf-Astoria ballroom live all came to party.  The less well-off but more bold packed the streets nearby, waiting for the ball to drop.  They wore hats, kept in motion, danced to themselves.  Cheer and revelry abounded.  It remains today, fifty or more years later.  Our flat screens display NY Eve and Fireworks around the world through each time zone, though Eastern Standard Time still dominates.  Every city, LA, Vegas, Miami, and NYC have people intent on being entertained.  I saw these forty minutes as something of a freak show.  Singers with millions of albums sold to other people, whose words I had to watch on closed caption as not discernible to me in my native language.  People, nearly all young adults, bouncing as best they can in the square foot allotted to them.  None of this revelry engaged me.  I am in the business of clock watching on New Years Eve.  My desire for entertainment, hedonism, or revelry of any type just hasn't been there, if it ever was there.   My hair doesn't get let down.  I do not bounce.

Still, the people on my screens have neural circuits.  Many usually in force lose their inhibition.  Or maybe not.  Perhaps they are the ones who purchase those performer albums and shuckle in private at home or at whatever replaced the disco in our contemporary public.  Maybe the brain evolves.  There were no grannies on those screens, but Guy Lombardo's dance floor needed to sell space to matronadults of wealth accumulation.  

As a community, for civic cohesion, perhaps we need a specified time like NY Eve.  A time when mostly young adults can release energy, sway to musical sounds even if they also need closed captioning to grasp the words.  I watch for forty minutes, sip some bubbly, and retire for the night.  They see the year as demarcation. However, they also plan for months to immerse themselves in this revelry.  They need money to travel to NY or Vegas.  Venues that compensate name talent while offering food, tables, and alcohol all charge admission, requiring most in attendance to save up during the year.  They not only enjoy themselves but impress others with their best duds and most garish accessories.  That means some planning and some shopping.  Revelry has its frivolous end point but its serious preparation.  The old year, a monument to what they were.  The new appearance, the aspiration to what might happen.  Always beginning at what is possible.  The peak of thrill, if only for the brief ecstasy of anticipation.

That's them.  And there are a lot of them.  There is only one me.