Towards the Future by Adam Welker

On Nostalgia

September 27th, 2011

I am a hopelessly nostalgic person. Is that a bad thing? I don’t ‘live in the past’, but I do get that drug-like twinge in the pleasure center of my brain when I think of a happy memory.

My nostalgia spills into my hobbies. I love retro video games, especially Super Nintendo and Gameboy. I love reading novels set in the 20′s, 30′s and 40′s. Mad Men? Pan Am? I’m all over that shit. Perhaps my obsession with minimalism comes from this same nostalgic feeling, as in a tribal person who lived with few belongings, or a traveler discovering new places with only his one bag. The strange thing is that I never experienced a lot of these things when they were current. I was born in the 80′s, and I was never a tribal person, pioneer, or explorer. Can I have fond recollections of a time I was never a part of?

At what point does nostalgia stop being a longing for times past and becomes instead a longing for an ideal? (Or what you think as ideal?)

We all long for simpler times, that seems fairly universal. But did these simpler times ever exist? Hell, the only reason we have Walden is because Thoreau was fed up with his fast-paced modern world. Are we continually speeding up, or is it just perspective?

You’re never going to be the person you were in high school. You’re never going to be with the same people again in the same way. Even if you were able to re-live the memories, it wouldn’t be the same. Isn’t that the best argument for living in the present? After all, the past is just a “collection of ‘nows’ that were.”

I can’t give up nostalgia. It’s part of who I am. One can visit the past in their mind, but we have to stay present and grounded. The best way to deal with nostalgia is not to become depressed and long for the good ol’ days, but to use it as motivation to create new happy memories.

  • http://twitter.com/TheChaseNight Chase Night

    Wrote about something similar just last night on my posterous. The one part of minimalism I’ve never gotten behind is the “Throw out all your memories!” stage. I don’t like pointless junk, but I do believe in sense memories and there are some things I will never throw out because they legitimately trigger memories I might otherwise forget. My brain is finite and things come and go and having meaningful objects to trigger good thoughts is a pleasure for me. (I find these items are usually hand-made or earth-based and rarely plastic though. I don’t think plastic retains memories very well. Seriously.) Anyway, now I’m just rambling. I love nostalgia. It helps me as a writer. If I had no past, I’d never build up ideas to write about.

    • http://www.thepanamericans.net Mark David Robertson

      Agreed Chase: there is this animal in me that wants to throw out everything–but it’s really fear that drives it. I feel so damned much I don’t want to be paralyzed by nostalgia. It’s like over-correcting a poor turn. 

    • http://www.towardsthefuture.com Adam Welker

      I like your thought of items retaining memories. I agree, handmade things do a better job at it. I have a few tea cups which belonged to my grandmother. They were handmade in England, Austria, France, and Bavaria in the late 1800′s and early 1900′s. Most people would put these away on display in a case somewhere. What’s the point in that? I drink my tea from one of these cups every single day. I feel like I’m honoring those memories somehow, rather than imprisoning them.

  • http://www.thepanamericans.net Mark David Robertson

    “The people that I used to know are illusions to me now.” The people who are able to be in the present and engage the future (like Dylan) are painfully aware of the nostalgia that lurks about the corners of all consciousness. We’re always fighting with “intimations of a more perfect past.” 

    The Fitzgerald photo is perfect: he does “futurist nostalgic prose” better than anyone.

    Cheers,
    M

    • http://www.towardsthefuture.com Adam Welker

      Therein lies the problem with the past; history is so set, solid, and complete, but yet so maleable. The future, according to mathematics and science is incalculable. The present is the only thing we can be absolutely sure of.

      Will our children have the same sense of nostalgia? Or will so many digital records, databases, and files ruin their mythologies?

  • http://liferapture.com Benjamin Spall

    Nice Adam.

    I’ll admit I’m a big one for nostalgia too. Every so often (before sleeping, which is a terrible sleeping method) I’ll listen to music from many years ago to trigger my nostalgic thoughs about a certain period of my life.

    My childhood, college days, each individual year during time at university, and even the day-to-day tasks required for all the different jobs I’ve had all come to surface during this time.

    For me, although I do enjoy I do enjoy my nostalgic looks back from time to time, I derive greater pleasure from looking forward into my plans over the next 6-12 months. Forward is the way I want to go, and forward is the way I shall look…

    • http://www.towardsthefuture.com Adam Welker

      It’s so wonderful/strange how certain things act as triggers. Whenever I eat Mike and Ikes I flash back to the first time I stayed up for 24 hours straight.

      Are there items that hold higher densities of history? Songs, photos, and letters come to mind.

      • http://liferapture.com Benjamin Spall

        Music is the biggest one for me, but smells and visual cues also work as well.

        For example, yesterday I was on the train home from work and I completely randomly got a song in my head when I looked at a particular overhanging light as we pulled out of a station. I realised I had been listening to that song the day before as we passed through that particular station and I’d seen the overhanging light.

        Not bad for a sponge in our head made up of 75% water.

        • http://www.towardsthefuture.com Adam Welker

          Smells aren’t as strong for me; I have a hard time retrieving a memory related to smells.

          A visual cue that’s really strong for me are sketches. Looking through my sketchbook, I could almost teleport/time travel to that exact moment. (If you’re interested, I post my travel sketches at sketchercise.com)

  • Jeffrey Kipnis

    ‘Are we continually speeding up, or is it just perspective?’
    Read this: All That Is Solid Melts into Air (ISBN 0-86091-785-1)

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