Sense and Confusion

Have you ever felt that what you are typing/thinking/yapping about to no one in particular is actually part of some strange zeitgeist you were other wise blind to?
Lately, I've become fed up with TV (let's just say, more than the usual sighing with disgust, more like a slow burn of hatred for the offerings from the Tube, followed by irrational throwing of the remote), bored with mainstream everything, and now even the ubercool offerings from the eternally ironic world of retro are ticking me off. And it's not just me. There seems to be a groundswell of tactic frowning at work. not everything from the 70's, hell, the 80's now, was cooler than now. A lot was basically crap and remains so. No amount of years can make orange flares and brown rumpus rooms crazy cool desirable. Revisiting your childhood collection of Smurfs, Abba socks, your mothers collection of rough brown glazed pottery pinch pots or countless macrame instructions are cool or worth sharing with the rest of the world unless like minds really want to seek you out.
Actually, that's what blogs are for.
I just want to make sure the mental clutter is cleared or stashed far away from me - not revisiting as a very special guest star for the ninth time on Tumblr.
Your past is your past. you can't go back, nor should you try.
If anything, please go back further to a time unknown to you (yep, everyone born post 1970) and dig around for the truly different and inspirational. Not icons approved by the masses. Put down the reproduction poster of Breakfast at Tiffany's. Read the book instead. Interested in old Hollywood glamour? Research a forgotten star, or director, or studio. Look to British, German, French cinema and really look at what they had to say about that era. Look at vintage world cinema and dig (beyond wikipedia, but I know you have to start somewhere).
If we want and strive to be different, have a new story ready to thrill.
If burlesque is being shaken down every desperate wannabe with a hot glue gun and sequins, go back to the music halls, circuses, travelling shows and cabaret. I enjoy Cabaret (the movie) because I have an increasing knowledge of that period, and what I grow to love takes me to new and old places with another perspective: Joy Division, Depeche Mode, Kate Bush, Bob Hope, Fred Astaire, Arthur Freed, Vincent Price, The Archers, Random Harvest, David Niven, circus films of the fifties, Lili St Cyr, Edith Piaf, Serge Gainsbourg, Goldfrapp, Portishead...and I don't know why but they all seem to flow on in connections I can't clearly identify. Now I need to add Frankenstein, Elsa Lancaster, The 49th Paralell, Tod Browning, Helmet Newton, Diane Arbus (eep spelling), Interview magazine...spirals witihin spirals.

Who needs retro when there's a whole mythos out there ready to play hopscotch with?