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Carly Simon had it about right 36 years ago. “We can never know about the days to come,” she sang on Anticipation, her hit back then.“But we think about them any way.”

We're doing an awful lot of awful thinking these days. Last year at this time the expectation for most of us was that, should the Fates allow, 2008 would be much like 2007. By and large, the gang at Globe Review, in its sundry prognostications, made little or no reference to economic conditions. We concentrated instead on the movies, TV shows, books, buildings, art exhibitions, plays and personnel changes we expected would excite our readers as winter gave way to spring, spring to summer and so on.

As you can see, we're still making those lists – but the economy is making us think twice about them. Of course, plays will continue to be produced, magazines published and movies made regardless of economic woes. Recessions are nothing new to this country. Depending on who you read and where you live, we've had anywhere from four to seven significant downturns since 1945. Nevertheless, the feeling this time is that 2009 will mark the start of something epochal.

Certainly the Jan. 27 federal budget will offer clues as to the future shape of the cultural landscape. There's hardly a magazine, film producer, professional theatre, TV program, major museum or book publisher in Canada that doesn't receive (and, in some instances, rely on) government support. The CBC alone receives more than $1-billion annually, courtesy of Ottawa. Will the budget, which Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has touted as “stimulative,” deem the culture sector worthy of sustained or even enhanced support? Or, with the government's pre-budget consultations set to end Jan. 9, are cuts on the way?

Backwards into the future

Marshall McLuhan once observed that we perceive the present through a rear-view mirror while “marching backwards into the future,” comforted by received wisdom, mouthing past truths, clinging to hopes and wishes. Yet as Globe film reviewer Rick Groen writes, the “smug little dictum” which tells us that when the going gets tough the tough go to the movies, will be tested. Will that happen this time, in what one might call the first depression of the digital age? Perhaps instead of curling up with a good book, individuals and families looking for low-cost ways to consume culture will curl up by the hearths of the computer screen, the TV set, the DVD player and the iPod nano. A recession, in short, may accelerate the atomistic/DIY tendencies at play in the last 10 years.

Then again, maybe not. The past is not all that reliable a teacher, and gazing into a crystal ball is a lousy way to tell the future, not least because it's so clear and mute while the future's so messy and noisy. Carly Simon's Anticipation was a sort of prayer to her then-beau Cat Stevens, a plea to “stay right here, cuz these are the good old days.” One year after its release, Simon was married to James Taylor. Five years later Cat Stevens was a Muslim named Yusuf Islam.

Go figure.