On Nostalgia —
Depending on who you are, this word can mean a number of different things, or it can feel a number of different ways – leaving you with emotions only you know. For some nostalgia feels nice, it feels comforting and beautiful or it can be painful and a reminder of what they can never have again in the exact same way – it’s what makes us human and what inspires so much art. For others, it’s a little more defined like mono no aware. Similar to nostalgia is Mono No Aware (物の哀れ), a Japanese term for the awareness of the impermanence of things, and the gentle, bittersweet sadness that comes with it; or, an empathy towards things, a sensitivity to ephemera and the aesthetic appreciation of impermanence.
As for myself it’s both – it makes me want to cry, but it also makes me want to live in it and find more things that make me feel that way and that inspire my inner curiosity and art. Sometimes it’s fleeting and fast, almost like I can’t even truly remember what it is, just that it makes me feel a certain way. Other times it lingers for weeks at a time, and I can’t seem to get myself to move on from the feeling or memory. I define nostalgia as the feeling that starts your heart and slowly makes its way towards your brain, legs, and fingers. As it travels throughout your body in lightning speed and in slow motion, you conceptually or viscerally revisit one or a couple of past moments, smells, tastes, views, conversations, experiences, feelings, anything you lived in the past – that has been activated or triggered by something else – a smell, experience, conversation, taste, time of day, anything. As for how it feels – it fills you up with Everything Everywhere all at once, and then it leaves just as fast as it came – leaving you with less than what you had before it came. Nostalgia takes, but it also represents a life lived. It can also give, it reminds you that those moments should be cherished and that they were special. Taking those moments for what they were and accepting them as they are as memories is the part where a person’s experience with nostalgia changes – it can be a moment of admiration, a moment of bitterness or jealousy for what was, it can simply be a moment of pause, or it can even be a moment of release and closure.
My pick is referenced above, Everything Everywhere all at once. This movie has something about it – it’s so odd, but it’s also so familiar to me. It brings me back to being a teenager, it brings me back to being a kid, and it also sends me into the future – it’s both coming of age and growing pains, along with sci-fi and comedy- the same way life seems to be at times. The time period, the central laundromat set, the cluttered home, the stacks of bills, communicating in 2 languages, and the props in this movie create an atmospheric nostalgia for me. I watched this movie with my mother, who was entertained by it at times, unimpressed, not watching, or disgusted at other moments. If you’ve seen this film or know anything about it – you will understand the layers of a daughter (me), watching this movie with my mother (unimpressed). She and I aren’t too good at holding conversations without arguments, nor do we spend much time together, so it is comedic to have spent quality time watching this movie together.
Staff Picks:
Staff Pick – Shauna
I find nostalgia everywhere—in cards photos I’ve saved; when people mention books or films I’ve seen, and certainly in music. Seeing a book cover, hearing a song, or even passing through the babies and infants aisles at Target—my son is now a strapping 16-year-old, but seeing the onesies and strollers and soft toys sends me reeling back to his early infancy. Nostalgia for me, having so far mostly lived a life with family and friends I am very close to, is always a mostly pleasant experience, tinged with a little melancholy.
I was home sick from elementary school, maybe in second or third grade, lying in bed half watching television. This was in the 1970s, and because my father is a jazz/big band musician, he was (unusually for that time) the parent who was home during the day while my mother worked a nine-to-five, so he was in the other room, probably practicing his horn. In my semi-fevered haze, I watched this show I’d never seen on the tiny black and white TV in the bedroom I shared with my sister. It was about a little boy with strange power over everyone around him, controlling even their thoughts…it was so strange, and kind of terrifying! I got up out of bed and wandered in to ask my Dad about it. I told him I just saw this weird thing on TV and described the story and he lit up with excitement, telling me that was The Twilight Zone—an old TV show that was just the best! Weird and surprising and all kinds of ideas about people and life. He was right; I was hooked on this weird and wonderful thing. It started my lifelong love affair with movies, books, music and ideas that take you somewhere unexpected, and make you think. Now you can get the whole series on a streaming channel, and even that thought makes me a little nostalgic for the time when I had to wait for holidays when a channel ran The Twilight Zone marathons for a weekend. Every time I see that episode, and even if someone says “It’s a good life,” I remember my first encounter with the fascinating genius of Rod Serling. I. Maybe start with this episode, but don’t stop there! See them all!
Staff Pick – Young
Nostalgia for many is about happy memories, but there’s a bittersweet feeling attached to it because nostalgia is often triggered by a recollection of a time or place that is long gone or at least consigned to a seemingly distant past. A book that has a nostalgic story for me is Family Style, a graphic novel by Thien Pham. It’s a brief memoir about Pham coming to America with his family as refugees after the Vietnam War. His experience adjusting to a new life in America reminded me a bit of what my family went through. I was reminded of the carefree attitude and blissful ignorance of growing up in an uncertain environment reading about his childhood. While the story is more or less one I can relate to, it’s the theme of food and its association with the immigrant experience that resonates with me. Tasting and smelling “exotic” food in a new country and also the comfort of eating traditional dishes from home in a strange land conjure up fond memories as I read Pham’s story. The fact that this book was a gift has a bit of nostalgia for me as well. The story and the book itself bring about a wistful smile when I open it.
Staff Pick – Matt
So much of our culture is just nostalgia for the past, whether for our own childhood or times when we weren’t even alive. It’s a comforting feeling but in my experience it’s a comfort that quickly fades as we return from the dreamworld of the past to the stark realities of modern life. I think this is because in many cases, the nostalgia we feel is for something that never truly existed, either because we see our own past through rose-colored glasses, or because we long for a mythical past that in truth only came from the minds of Hollywood or Madison Avenue. “Hail Caesar!” is borne both of Coen Brothers’ love of Old Hollywood, and an honest attempt to get at the complexities that world contained. As the Coens are well aware, the reality of the golden age of cinema was often in stark contrast to the glamorous image often associated with it. This is clear from the very first scene when Studio head Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) busts up a Starlet’s risque photo shoot, giving her a fake name and alibi of how she got lost after a costume party, in an attempt to protect her family-friendly public image. This juxtaposition continues through the film as we meet kidnapped movie stars, secret communists, and dirt-digging gossip columnists in what might seem at first glance to be just a nostalgic romp through the glamor of old Hollywood. Would that it were so simple.
Staff Pick
Gold – 20 Super Hits (2012) by Eruption • Song: One Way Ticket cover
This song reminds me of my dad – it reminds me of being 6 years old and taking the metro with him to school, doctor’s visits, shopping trips, swap meet visits, trips to explore the city. My dad and I are the same in that we love to be out and about and we long for more, never content with just being home. Something my mother and brother never have or will relate to. When my dad got cancer and could not go out as much as we used to, he longed for adventure – and we would take short walks blasting this song on a little portable speaker as we passed walked through our neighborhood. For those reading this – my dad is still alive and well – still has cancer, but he’s okay! He’s still grooving to the music.
Pure Heroine (2013) by Lorde (Available on hoopla) • Song: Ribs
I was 16 years old when this song came out and so was Lorde. It was in her debut album and I found myself in her lyrics, harmonies, and teenage emotions. It was my senior year of high school and a couple months after the release of this album, I was on a plane heading on my Belgium and France trip. I had just turned 17 and so had Lorde. I was also preparing to be separated from all of my friends – we were all applying and getting accepted to different universities, different programs, creating different life plans. It was such a lonely time, but I was never quite alone. The feelings I was feeling – they’re all captured in the ethereal airy spatial audio going in and out, front and back, and left and right from one earphone to the other. Combined with Lorde’s harmonies and center vocals, all the subtle synth layers and the rhythmic foundational drums created a vacuum of unsettling comfort for me, it was the only song I listened to on my flight from LA to NY to Frankfurt and finally to Brussels. Listening to that song today takes me back to being 17, emotional, lonely, and reflective – as teenagers can be. Her latest works (Melodrama, Solar Power, Virgin) still have the same effect on me – I seem to consistently relate to her experiences – her break-ups and identity crisis seem to line up with my own – I find myself lost in nostalgia whenever I listen to her music.
Some nostalgic reads:
The Remains of the Day by Kazou Ishiguro
The novel’s narrator, Stevens, is a perfect English butler who tries to give his narrow existence form and meaning through the self-effacing, almost mystical practice of his profession. In a career that spans the second World War, Stevens is oblivious of the real life that goes on around him — oblivious, for instance, of the fact that his aristocrat employer is a Nazi sympathizer. Still, there are even larger matters at stake in this heartbreaking, pitch-perfect novel — namely, Stevens’ own ability to allow some bit of life-affirming love into his tightly repressed existence.
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his years of pilgrimage: a novel by Haruki Murakami
” … story of Tsukuru Tazaki, a young man haunted by a great loss; of dreams and nightmares that have unintended consequences for the world around us; and of a journey into the past that is necessary to mend the present”–Dust jacket.
The Last Letter From Your Lover by Jojo Moyes
In 1960, Jennifer Stirling wakes in the hospital and remembers nothing–not the car accident that put her there, not her wealthy husband, not even her own name. Searching for clues, she finds an impassioned letter, signed simply “B,” from a man for whom she seemed willing to risk everything. In 2003, journalist Ellie Haworth stumbles upon the letter and becomes obsessed with learning the unknown lovers’ fate–hoping it will inspire her own happy ending.
A Gentleman in Mosow by Amor Towles
“A Gentleman in Moscow immerses us in another elegantly drawn era with the story of Count Alexander Rostov. When, in 1922, the thirty-year-old Count is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, he is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. An indomitable man of erudition and wit, Rostov must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, the Count’s reduced circumstances provide him entry to a much larger world of emotional discovery as he forges friendships with the hotel’s other denizens, including a willful actress, a shrewd Kremlinite, a gregarious American, and a temperamental chef. But when fate suddenly puts the life of a young girl in his hands, he must draw on all his ingenuity to protect the future she so deserves”–Dust jacket flap.
The Amazing Adventures by Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
In 1939 New York City, Joe Kavalier, a refugee from Hitler’s Prague, joins forces with his Brooklyn-born cousin, Sammy Clay, to create comic-book superheroes inspired by their own fantasies, fears, and dreams.
On November 22, 1963, three shots changed the world. What if it never happened? Jake Epping is a 35-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. Not much later, Jake’s friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane–and insanely impossible–mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination.
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
“In the year 2044, reality is an ugly place. The only time teenage Wade Watts really feels alive is when he’s jacked into the virtual utopia known as the OASIS. Wade’s devoted his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world’s digital confines — puzzles that are based on their creator’s obsession with the pop culture of decades past and that promise massive power and fortune to whoever can unlock them. But when Wade stumbles upon the first clue, he finds himself beset by players willing to kill to take this ultimate prize. The race is on, and if Wade’s going to survive, he’ll have to win — and confront the real world he’s always been so desperate to escape”–Back cover.
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What brought you nostalgia most recently?