Nostalgia

Recently I've been thinking about the properties of nostalgia. Essentially the way we glorify and mystify the past. It's like the past becomes a constantly changing and evolving entity even though since it already happened, it should be unchangable. The problem is that the only remnance we have of the past is how we remember it. And even if the moment is recorded, we still tend to change the feeling of it with our minds. The importance and greatness of the situation come together upon reflection and the myth just grows and grows.

What I'm most interested in right now, is not nostalgia like your favorite movie when you were a kid, but that nostalgia that invents folk heroes and mythic epic tales. I think a great example of this is professional and college sports, especially in playoffs and for championships. For the player, they are just playing the game they've played since they were a little kid. However when they come up big, like Darren Mccarty in the 97 stanley cup clinching game, it becomes the stuff of legend. The weight of the situation is really all invented by the media, and looking back on it, it becomes hyped up more and more. Or even better the 1980 US olympic team defeating the russians. I mean on one hand it's just a game, on the other it's almost like a statement from this country in one of the biggest underdog stories of all time. All the surrounding circumstances just pile on and on every time we look back at that game.

And in many ways this is not that different than the way written legends work like King Arthur or Jesus. We really do not know much about the original people, but over time the stories have been built up so much they become powerful images in culture. Even just written history about George Washington is all a sort of legend in a way. And even though sports are caught on tape now and not passed down through word of mouth, they still have a culture that works in a similar way. Just talk to an American baseball fan and they get this look in their eye of the solemn importance of baseball in their life, that is the power of nostalgia and legend.

It can be both good and bad. Many people cling to their pasts and refuse to enjoy their present or future just remembering something that was once good. They refuse to move on and the nostalgia holds them hostage. This sentimentality has always been lost on me. People talk about how it was always better in the past, but really was it? And does it really matter? We should focus on the now and maybe learn from the past, but nostalgia really clouds a lot of peoples eyes when looking back, and it's dangerous.

However I think nostalgia can also be an incredible creative tool. Just understanding how legend works, the passage through word of mouth and the addition of the circumstances later. The identities people are given by those who remember them, colored by those people's memories. This has some potential to create new and interesting ideas based in old ones. Like borrowing a theme in classical music, or sampling a beat in rap. It gives old experiences a new flair, but using nostalgia as a creative tool.

There will be more on this...