What is Nostalgia?
A longing for the past? Commentary to defer the future’s inherent urgency? A way to validate the sum of our bad choices?
I have a competent long-term memory; others in my circle may describe it as freakish. Accordingly, I spend a great deal of time comparing past and present, which means the future doesn’t preoccupy me too much.
The cursed side of this very capable long-term memory is its DNA; I visualize things according to the feeling of the memory, which means that if the memory’s atmosphere was in any way charged, it now swills around my spinal fluid as a bad trip.
Good for an artist, painful for a human being trying to see light in the world. Fortunately, I have death as a humor-heavy failsafe (you can’t stay mad at the world when you know your time here is finite), so I usually turn the bad to face the light of good and… WHOOSH! Nostalgia is born.
So, Nostalgia. Remnants of my real and imagined childhood hang heavy in the fruits of words, picture books, music, and smells. Visions of my home in Johannesburg: the jacaranda trees, riding bikes with friends, how the clouds and blue sky would dance with each other. Elementary and High School: endless green fields, the burgeoning of love, and intimations of leadership. Post-school sees visions from atop hills, stars twinkling above promising futures so ripe and real, so distant from the ennui of now.
I am burdened; I am lost. But in my past, I am free. Free to believe in the dreams of my youth; free to chart the imaginations lying silent against my heart, those hallowed chambers of wonder which drive my eyes and mind and being to recreate the magic for my own children, those most precious things I’ll ever know.
Nostalgia: when the light of waking dreams winks at the setting sun.