Ringo Starr, the oldest and quaintest Beatle, turned 64 earlier this month. For baby boomers everywhere, his July 7 birthday was as sobering in its way as New Year's Day 1984, when reality finally overtook George Orwell's grim fable about a dystopian future. The British novelist finished writing "Nineteen Eighty-Four" in 1948 and simply reversed the decade numbers to get his iconic title.
At the time, 1984 must have seemed as far off and exotic as 2040 does now: Thirty-six years may be a blip on the calendar, but it's an eon in cultural terms. To those who grew up in the decades preceding 1984, that year was the future. Twenty years later, oddly enough, it still is, as if somewhere along the way the year slipped its historical moorings and took on a free-floating life as a symbol. Maybe that's why it was such a jolt when it actually arrived.
It feels a little bit like that this month. Some 37 years ago, nearly the same blip of time that separated Orwell from his fantasy future, the Beatles recorded a song enshrining their tongue-in-cheek vision of a very different future: "When I'm Sixty-Four," sung by Paul McCartney on the group's landmark album "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."