The Time it Was
The Time it Was
Forgetting to Forget
November 25, 2020
If You Don’t Remember, You Forget
Avalon is now thirty years old. Barry Levinson’s classic was released in 1990 and was set in the 1940s and 50s and now, decades later, it feels like the era it was released is almost as distant as the time it was set.
Have you seen it? Go watch it now, then come back. Just kidding. This won’t take long. Avalon begins on Thanksgiving Day circa 1946 and one of the old men of the family is telling a story about the old days as the little kids gather round and listen and one of the old ladies asks him why he’s telling the same old stories and he says “If you don’t remember, you forget.”
Thanksgiving is a time for eating, football, and remembering and this is the Thanksgiving many of us will likely remember most and it comes in a year everyone wants to forget. But you have to remember because if you don’t remember, you forget.
There’s a scene in Avalon in which the circus parades through the streets and an elephant, a sad, old looking elephant, marches by and looks at the people of Baltimore in 1946 with an expression that almost says “remember me.”
They say elephants never forget. Even when the circus leaves town. --TK
Wednesday, November 25, 2020