Nostalgia

I was musing on the concept of nostalgia today, and I had the unsettling realization that memories tend to become idealized after a certain point in time. We tend to pine for the past because we're discontent with the present. Compounding that is the fact that we tend to gloss over the blemishes of past experiences and emphasize the brighter spots. This isn't a malevolent tendency; it's subconscious and part of being human. As a personal example I remember every last vivid detail of my first real kiss, but I only have vague recollections of a horrific car accident I was in that involved the vehicle hitting a telephone pole (which snapped into three pieces), flipping upside down, and then only being able to get out by kicking out shards of window glass and rolling out the window upside down (I wasn't driving, by the way). That said, one of the things that drives the point of an idealized past home is that for the most part, things that I thought were great and enjoyed in my past, tend to not interest me anymore to put it mildly. In fact, one of the best ways to preserve pleasant memories of the past is to not revisit the original source material.

One of the most powerful examples of nostalgia for many people, myself included, is in music. I shake my head sometimes when I think of the kinds of music and bands I used to love in my more formative years. Part of this is out of our control - I mean, our tastes and interests naturally evolve over time. I remember getting pulled into the one-hit-wonder "band" Ace of Base in the early nineties through my best friend. I was 13. It's forgivable. Sometimes we find gold by accident, and carry it with us into the future, such as discovering The Cure, Depeche Mode, and Mozart around 1996 (I still listen to all three to this day).

I kind of got left behind with the rise of alternative rock in the 1990s. Never was a huge fan of punk either, and I never even tried to get into ska (I think the name alone made me resist). Occasionally you come across a band, or at least an album, of a genre that you typically avoid, that strikes a chord with you for some unexplainable reason. For me the prime example of this is the band The Offspring, and more significantly, the album Americana. Seriously, this is a fantastic album. There's something about The Offspring that sets it outside its pseudo-punk genre. Their songs range from melodrama on one end, to hilarity and satire on the other, with most occupying a sensible middle ground. I think one of the reasons why I'm taken by them is they don't take themselves that seriously, and have a talent for social commentary and satire. Of course, I'm of the feeling that Americana was their best, and only "true" album. Seriously, if you've never listened to it, give it a try. It's worth it.

We have an incredibly powerful ability to lodge memories into music. Songs contain vivid memories of summers with friends, past relationships, friendships, school years, and random moments in time. It always amazes me when I listen to a song I haven't heard in years and all of a sudden memories and emotions from that time come rushing in all at once. It's almost like how smells are linked to memory. Of course, often enough if we dare to scratch the surface and really, honestly explore those memories, we find a familiar pattern: As great as those memories are, we're using rose-colored glasses when viewing them. More often than not, at that point in time we were lamenting for the nostalgia of a prior past, and considering the present to be inadequate or lacking in comparison. I guess the lesson is to enjoy the present. It's all you've got.