Mythicons and Celeheros

I watched this great documentary on PBS last night called "Get up, Stand up: The history of pop and protest." Hosted by Chuck D.,the film traced the history of protest much and music with a political or social message. It was not only a nice study of popular culture (one of my areas of concentration) but a nice trip down memory lane. It also raised certain points that I'm constantly turning over in my mind.
For example, if there was an artist like Jim Morrison alive today (and I'm sure there is somewhere), would I even pay attention? What about David Bowie? Is there someone with his theatricality performing today (I doubt it, but maybe) that I am not aware of? And does it seem important? Would I think it's all as cool as it seemed in the past?
This is a long tale of my relationship not only with the popular culture, but the past as well. Many of the artist I discovered in my youth (by youth I mean 20's) had already had their impact on culture. Many of them were dead or long since faded into obscurity. History had already consigned to them the roles they play. There was no sense of ambivalence, and even if there was, the ambivalence itself was seen as significant.
Partially this all comes from the way I interact with culture and history. I'm not sure where it all started or why, because it predates my early college years, though I think it was just after high school, maybe. When I wanted to know something about a band or an artist, I would watch documentaries, read magazine articles or books. Perhaps, as I write these words down, it could be said that I always experienced things vicariously through other people's words and experiences. At least, at that young age. Punk and even heavy metal, indeed, rock and roll itself was quite outside of experience. My parents, being incredibly strict Christians, didn't listen to anything other than gospel, unless it was some Old School Country. There were no punks in my school, no "alternative kids" or whatever the REM and Bauhaus fans were known as. The most radical students were the metal heads and they literally scared me. Anyway, so I always had a view of people that was created by history and the media. When I listened to David Bowie, I wasn't listening to music but listening to David Bowie: Queer Icon, Glam Rock Pioneer.
So, I was talking about this summer. I was watching this old DVD of a certain 90's band that I always loved, had always, and still is, one of my favorite bands ever, and suddenly I was seeing something I hadn't noticed before. Here in the live footage was someone with all the charisma of a David Bowie, all the passion of a Pete Townsend, all the angst and anger of Bob Mould. Here was a bombastic performance of a musical virtuoso, pushing the music into this amazing shape not unlike a Mick Ronsen, a Jimmy Page, or even shades of Jimmi Hendrix. Here was one of these icons that I had always looked to, but I had been there when it happened. I had seen this band in concert twice, and I never thought, at the time, that this was my generations music, this was my generations Icon. Not even my generation, this was MY icon, my artistic hero. But it never quite felt that way.
Maybe I let the media tell me what is or isn't important. Maybe I wait until the paradigms are formed and then use them to define myself. Maybe I'm always looking for history to happen when what's happening is simply right now. Maybe it never happened the way they said it happened, maybe no one ever felt so revolutionary, so enmeshed in a cultural phenomenon. Maybe people are just people and the music was what it was for them, and this sense of narrative that we get after the fact is something we impose. Or maybe I just forgot. Maybe I hadn't let myself hold to those moments of transcendental bliss, when an artist is taking me out of myself, out of my life, and plunging me into something profound, absolute, and visceral. Maybe all that had just slipped my mind, that feeling of being that alive, that raw, that sad and that impassioned all that same time, maybe I just can't tolerate that as much as I used to so I cover it up. Maybe that's what happens when you get old.