nostalgia, the bastard
Jul. 28th, 2004 04:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ajvaSo I'm listening to the KLF remix of Mea Culpa by Enigma, whose album I got into while in Taiwan in 1993, aged 19. And meanwhile, I'm cutting and pasting a note to a table that declares: 4) Excludes classified advertising before mid-1994.
And suddenly I feel nostalgic for 1993, and the "mosquito-ravaged/dodgy-oversexed-limping-but-have-to-keep-him-sweet-or-I-might-not-get-my-visa-renewed landlord/stuffy climate/sunburn-through-a-lifejacket/cockroaches can fly you know and oh look that looks like a big orange cloud of midges" nonsense that was my long vacation study trip to Taiwan in the summer of 1993.
I hate nostalgia. Books talk of it with fondness. In fact, I remember the definition of it I was given at school: looking back on the past with fondness. Fondness?
Bullshit. Nostalgia tugs at your heart precisely because it reminds you that you are not as far away from death as you used to be. But I remember experiencing my first twinge of nostalgia when I was 19 years old - it was a few months before Taiwan - and I was reminiscing about kids' TV shows of the early 1980s. Nineteen for God's sake! So young, and yet feeling so old...
So are we as a species doomed to feel more and more nostalgic, more and more often, as the years go by? I wonder if there's an avoidance system I can use, so I can focus solely on the future, whatever is left of it.
Oh look, the CD's moved on to my favourite Bjork song.
How 1995.
And suddenly I feel nostalgic for 1993, and the "mosquito-ravaged/dodgy-oversexed-limping-but-have-to-keep-him-sweet-or-I-might-not-get-my-visa-renewed landlord/stuffy climate/sunburn-through-a-lifejacket/cockroaches can fly you know and oh look that looks like a big orange cloud of midges" nonsense that was my long vacation study trip to Taiwan in the summer of 1993.
I hate nostalgia. Books talk of it with fondness. In fact, I remember the definition of it I was given at school: looking back on the past with fondness. Fondness?
Bullshit. Nostalgia tugs at your heart precisely because it reminds you that you are not as far away from death as you used to be. But I remember experiencing my first twinge of nostalgia when I was 19 years old - it was a few months before Taiwan - and I was reminiscing about kids' TV shows of the early 1980s. Nineteen for God's sake! So young, and yet feeling so old...
So are we as a species doomed to feel more and more nostalgic, more and more often, as the years go by? I wonder if there's an avoidance system I can use, so I can focus solely on the future, whatever is left of it.
Oh look, the CD's moved on to my favourite Bjork song.
How 1995.
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no subject
Date: 2004-07-28 08:44 am (UTC)When I start to feel nostalgic, I know it's time to be doing more with my existance.