i could last forever
DESCRIPTION
An exploration into the idea of youth. Brief: an exercise in visual editing - to create a saddle sitch book based upon a theme.TRANSCRIPT
I Could Last Forever
4-5 Of Youth and Age
6-7 Young Hero
8-9 Sense of Adventure
10-11 Adolescent Mentor
12-13 Birth of the Teenager
14-19 Teenage Pilgrimage
20-21 Rebel Without a Cause
Contents
I Could Last ForeverAn exploration into the idea of youth.
By Alexandra Brittain
4I Could Last Forever
Young men, in the conduct and manage of actions, embrace
more than they can hold; stir more than they can quiet; fly
to the end, without consideration of the means and degrees;
pursue some few principles, which they have chanced upon
absurdly; care not to innovate, which draws unknown
inconveniences; use extreme remedies at first; and, that which
doubleth all errors, will not acknowledge or retract them; like
an unready horse, that will neither stop nor turn.
Sir Francis Bacon
Of Youth
Certainly it is good to compound employments of both; for
that will be good for the present, because the virtues of either
age, may correct the defects of both; and good for succes-
sion, that young men may be learners, while men in age are
actors; and, lastly, because authority followeth old men, and
favor and popularity, youth. But for the moral part, perhaps
youth will have the pre-eminence, as age hath for the politic.
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Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too
little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the
full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.
And Age
Your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream
dreams, inferreth that young men, are admitted nearer to God
than old, because vision, is a clearer revelation, than a dream.
And certainly, the more a man drinketh of the world, the more
it intoxicateth; and age doth profit rather in the powers of
understanding, than in the virtues of the will and affections.
Teen dances of the 1950s.
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Young
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
V. The Soldier
Rupert Brooke 1914
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The last surviving combat veteran of World War I,
Claude Choules, died in his sleep, he was 110.
Hero
I Could Last Forever
This could have occurred nowhere but in England, where men and sea
interpenetrate, so to speak--the sea entering into the life of most men,
and the men knowing something or everything about the sea, in the way
of amusement, of travel, or of bread-winning.
We were sitting round a mahogany table that reflected the bottle, the
claret-glasses, and our faces as we leaned on our elbows. There was a
director of companies, an accountant, a lawyer, Marlow, and myself.
We all began life in the merchant service. Between the five of us there was
the strong bond of the sea, and also the fellowship of the craft, which no
amount of enthusiasm for yachting, cruising, and so one can give, since
one is only the amusement of life and the other is life itself.
8
Sense of
Peter Pan - the boy who never grew up.
I Could Last Forever 9
Adventure
Exerpt from ‘Youth’ by Joseph Conrad
“Yes, I have seen a little of the Eastern seas; but what I remember best is
my first voyage there. You fellows know there are those voyages that seem
ordered for the illustration of life, that might stand for a symbol .You
fight, work, sweat, nearly kill yourself, sometimes do kill yourself, trying to
accomplish something--and you can’t.
“It was altogether a memorable affair. It was my first voyage to the
East, and my and it was also my skipper’s first command. You’ll admit it
was time. He was sixty if a day; a little man, with a broad back, with bowed
shoulders and one leg more bandy than the other, he had that queer
twisted-about appearance you see so often in men who work in the fields.
He had a nut-cracker face--chin which was framed in iron-grey fluffy hair,
that looked like a chin strap of cotton-wool sprinkled with coal-dust. And
he had blue eyes in that old face of his, which were amazingly like a boy’s,
with that candid expression some quite common men preserve to the end
of their days by a rare gift of simplicity of heart and rectitude of soul.
What induced him to accept me was a wonder. I had come out of a crack
Australian clipper, where I had been third officer, and he seemed to have
a prejudice against crack clippers as aristocratic and high-toned. He said to
me, ‘You know, in this ship you will have to work.’ I said I had to work in
every ship I had ever been in. ‘Ah, but this is different, and you gentlemen
out of them big ships;... but there! I dare say you will do. Join to-morrow.’
10I Could Last Forever
Adolescent
Fagin - the unreliable mentor.
In Greek mythology, Mentor was a loyal friend and adviser to Odysseus,
king of Ithaca. Mentor helped raise Odysseus’ son, Telemachus, while
Odysseus was away fighting the Trojan War. Mentor became Telemachus’
teacher, coach, counselor and protector, building a relationship based on
affection and trust.
11I Could Last Forever
Mentor
‘The person who goes through
adolescence in a state of
equilibrium is abnormal.’Stanley Hall - ‘Adolescence’ 1904
Mentoring today is synonymous with the process by which we guard and
guide others. Mentors seemingly “adopt” those placed in their care.
The Odyssey relates that, when his father failed to return home at the end
of the Trojan war, Telemachus set out to search for him, accompanied by
the Goddess Athena who was disguised as his old guardian, Mentor.
Telemachus was shipwrecked on the island of the nymph Calypso, where
Ulysses too had been wrecked and kept by Calypso who had wanted to
marry him. Similarly, Calypso fell in love with Telemachus and detained
him by persuading him to relate his previous adventures. Venus sent Cupid
to aid her in her designs, but Telemachus fell in love with Eucharis, one of
Calypso’s nymphs, provoking the godess’s wrath. Cupid incited the other
nymphs to burn a new boat that Mentor had built to aid Telemachus’s es-
cape. Telemachus was delighted by this delay but was thrown into the sea
by Mentor and they were picked up by a passing vessel.
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Birth of
Teenage marketing in the 1960s.
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The Teenager
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The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show.
Teenage
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The 60’s saw the introduction of the Hippie Trails.
Pilgrimage
16I Could Last Forever
Today, hundreds of thousands of people are taking gap years all over the
world. Some last more than a year, some less, but they’re all about taking a
break that is much more than a holiday. Many travel to places such as Aus-
tralia, New Zealand and Thailand for months on end, travelling in relative
comfort and ease, but its taken a long time to get where we are today, and
gap years have come a long way.
Many things have changed since gap years first became a recognisable
phenomenon in the 1960s. These were the years when the young genera-
tion shook off the post-war austerity and grew the confidence to ask if
their lives had to be the same as their parents’. Gap years were part of this
cultural and social revolution, and if there’s one thing that has remained
the same throughout the ages it’s the essence of travelling.
A gap year is about new challenges and new experiences, seeing new coun-
tries and meeting new people. It’s about living life to the full and realising
there’s a world of opportunity out there just waiting to be explored. But
the question is, when did it all start?
The 60’s was a time of freedom of speech and independence, a time of
cultural and social revolution, and the decade that gap years were first
made popular. Arguably gap years started as cultural exchanges, discussed
among governments as a useful tool to create global awareness and under-
standing in an attempt to prevent further world wars from occurring. Little
did they know they were creating the gap year as well.
History of
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A richer spiritual life was what many of these travellers were looking
for and they initially set their sights on India, a country that was open to
different cultures and change. People in their droves trod the hippie trail
from Delhi down to Goa, setting a precedence of backpacking for years to
come, on a route that is still followed today.
In 1967, Nicholas Maclean-Bristol set up the company Project Trust and
sent three volunteers to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. According to Project
Trust “the young volunteers would of course assist in the building of a
developing nation but, at such an impressionable age, they would also be
learning about Ethiopia, developing their own skills and learning to live
independently at the same time.
The Gap Year
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Forty years on and those aims remain unchanged.” The desire to do
something to help others abroad had been there before but now there was
a straightforward way to achieve it and a volunteering ethos was born. As
the 60s turned into the 70s, gap years continued to grow in popularity.
Flights were still expensive so gappers turned to buses instead. The mode
of transport didn’t matter; it was all about the journey, not the destination.
In 1977, GAP Activity Projects (now Lattitude Global Volunteering), a
UK organization, set-up volunteer placements for students who wanted to
travel between school and university. This was a continuation of what had
been started by Project Trust ten years before. The classic between-school-
and-university gap years began to grow.
Orlando Charman’s infamous ‘Gap Yah’ video.
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Gap years continued to grow throughout the 80s and early 90s. Back-
packing was the popular thing to do. It was hip. It was cool. Independent
travel and backpacking was getting easier, less risky, and most importantly,
cheaper. Demand grew, prices for air travel fell and all of a sudden taking
a gap year had become a rite of passage for pre-university students in the
UK.
Gapyear.com was one of the first ever online social networks, specifically
aimed at backpackers to share their stories and experiences. Other sites
have come and gone but gapyear.com continues to be the number one
place to talk all things gap year.
In July 2005, the economic and business forecasters Mintel valued the gap
year travel industry globally at £5bn a year and identified it as one of the
fastest growing sectors of the travel industry. Not only were gap years here
but they were here to stay. With an online platform tapping into tech-
nology that was increasingly accessible, gap years grew from strength to
strength, as did the companies around it.
Today, going on a gap year is as popular and as common as going on a
two-week holiday. It doesn’t matter what type of gap year you’re taking, all
that matters is you’re taking one. The point is gap years are no longer just
for the young and rich. Backpacking and travelling is accessible to all ages,
from all backgrounds, and there’s never been a better time to travel.
Written by Marcus Sherifi
20I Could Last Forever
Rebel
Plot
Teenage loner Jim Stark arrives in town, and proves himself in knife fights
and on the roads. But what he really wants is love from his parents.
Review
It’s safe to assume that the world of the film teenager would have been
a very different one had ‘Rebel Without A Cause’ never been made. As
James Dean created a whole new breed of movie hero - the cool, troubled
adolescent, he turned screen-teen culture into a new phenomenon.
The film still holds a powerful emotional truth in its painfully poign-
ant study of teens in turmoil. It’s a film tinged with sadness, given that
all three of its stars died young - and against some of today’s more hard
21I Could Last Forever
Without a Cause
Reviewed by Angie Errigo
hitting pictures, its brushes with the law, rival gang fights and tragic games
of car-dodging seem relatively tame.
That said, the central themes of teen trauma - from friendship and first
romance to the need to fit in remain relevant. Forget your ‘She’s All That’s
and ‘Down To You’s, this is the definitive teen flick. And its digital remas-
tering means it looks even better than ever.
Verdict
A fine script, dynamic direction, doomed romantic idealism and telling
performances make this the most timeless of Ray’s gripping social dramas.
Our answer is the world’s hope; it is to rely on youth.
This world demands the qualities of youth: not a time of life but a state of mind, a tem-per of the will, a quality of the imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of
the appetite for adventure over the love of ease.
President Robert F Kennedy