Everyone Pays

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I love everybody, well most of the time: My generation had the Beatles. That is what I thought. I thought it was normal. There was nothing strange about them. They were just there. They had always been there. I was eight when I noticed them, and at eight you do not know what you are missing. I did not know the rest of the world was noticing them too. They were everywhere; records, television, films, newspapers. That was how life was.

Later they called it a Boomer thing. At eight, the word meant nothing. I knew about the War and the Space Race. I knew Elvis and Hollywood and the Cold War. I knew the radio shows and the children’s programmes. The Beatles fitted into all of it. Black and white. Scratchy records. Radios that glowed and buzzed. They were part of life. Like Bible stories at Sunday School. Like sweets. You did not question them.

The adults did not like them. They said the songs were noise. They said the hair was wrong and long. They said Liverpool produced nothing good. That was what they said. We did not listen. We argued about the Beatles or the Stones and hurt each other to prove it. We knew the Beatles were better, but the Stones looked dangerous, and danger counted for something. The adults said it would pass. They were wrong, and they knew it.

In time we learned the truth. Our gods were men. They failed. They broke. They told us this from the start, but belief is easier than understanding. Understanding takes work.

By my sixteenth year it was finished. The breakups came. The scandals followed. Others tried to take their place. Sure they could play and write and sing, but it was never the same. They followed the tracks already made. You cannot walk that way twice. What was lost could only be copied, and the copies were weaker. The world kept turning.

Now machines remake the past. They bring back faces and sounds without weight or soul. You can look at it, but you cannot taste it. It is empty. We watch it happen and know where it leads. History repeats, but it never heals. Time does damage. The Devil is in the small things, and he stays there, happy.

You tell your story anyway. It may matter. Few will believe it or take note. Then people grow old and die, and the story plays again on a screen in a universal loop. The world does not need more shows. It needs care. It needs honest hands. Once there was a chance but humans are a stupid race. The machines took it and trashed it. What comes next is earned. It did not have to be this way.