I know that is the name of a club in Bucharest (‘out of date’ means Expirat in Romanian), but I am not here to talk about it. It is about a specific attitude we have towards objects, people and customs.
We have clothes which are not fashionable anymore an example being: if you do not wear a flowery dresses with sport shoes, pants as short as possible in the summer of 2018, or jeans as ripped as they can be (just to point out a few), you are somehow ‘boring’, out of date.
We have words that are not fashionable anymore: if you do not use frequently the word ‘like’( in such a way that it becomes a verbal tic), if you say ‘I am pathetic’ instead of ‘I am an idiot’, if you do not know if a song is ‘banging’, or if someone ‘gives you panic’ you are out of touch; you find out that those are words used in the olden days. All this while you look astonished at the interlocutor and wonder if you should have a reaction or not.
We have customs that are not fashionable anymore: if you read books instead of listening to one you may seem as not adapted to our time; if you want your own personal space to be with your thoughts you may seem like having a problem with the people around you or that you might be antisocial; if you are not part of a group where cool things happen where hillbilly jokes are made, you might be considered weird or a show-off.
I can happily say that I have people around me that are 10-20 years older than me ( but I have some young ones as well) who are like gifts brought into my life. People who: possess knowledge, have read all their life, study, know how to make unexpected connections between areas, know how to ask the right and unsuspected questions; people who can stroll through literature, art, politics, religion, classical music, philosophy, and understand human nature. They are like human libraries, always fascinating. I like to think about them as renaissance people or some sort of orchestra people.
For many, those people are mundane or outdated; they are fashionable no more, they do not know (or refuse) to use some of the expressions, they do not go to ‘cool’ places, do not listen to the latest hits and a lot of times they are seen as from another planet.
I do not plead for being stuck into a specific era or generation. I plead for the construction of the mind resembling a quality script filled with literature, art, music, philosophy, psychology, the art of conversation; afterwards others will come as well.
I remember a movie named ‘The Imitation Game’, the lead character, a brilliant mind, was marginalized and could not make friends, just for the reason that he was different. Or better said, they could not fit him into their patterns. Therefore, they avoided him because they could not understand him.
For now, I have the feeling that if you refuse to align with the newest trends you could be considered strange, which in return will grant you the title of being ‘out of date’.
