The presumption I used to have was that nostalgia was my elders' version of the drugs I was doing. For them, it was absolutely deleterious nonsense and they should be sheepish about it. Now that I am myself an Elder, I see that nostalgia was a crutch for these weaklings - the weaklings who fashioned brick by brick the hideous world we must endure. By comparison, my own nostalgia is carved from marble, a material thing, and represents the weight and precision of fact.
The most formative part of my life was spent in a kind of ahistorical interregnum. Many people were under the impression that history was over, and from where they were standing they could certainly make a case. I think it's sorta beyond debate that many things were better, but I am a gentleman. Let's tart it up linguistically, if that will help. Would it be better to say that this previous era was different, and that some of these phenomena could be said to have degraded since?
My mom's music was pretty good, though. My mom liked all kinds of good music but it wasn't an affection we could share because she was deeply embarrassed about her hippie phase, ashamed, in the same way that millennials are embarrassed about their posting history on Something Awful. It's safe to say that both cadres sought absolution, it's just that religion looks a little bit different now.
Today's moist larvae swing and hang from our culture like a jungle gym. The past is just another toy for them, and they can sift time and space with very small movements of their finger, like the sorcerers of old. Every now and then one of my grubs will discover an ancient programme and see that it has, like, three times the episodes. It's been very interesting to watch them open the lid on my own young adulthood, look assessingly at a treasured gewgaw or tchotchke, and throw it over their shoulder. There's no reason to be mad about it, you form an identity by looking at what your parents value and deciding what metaphors to keep. Good practice, hopefully, for when they need to do the same thing with the literals.
Ronia and I were obsessed with the first season of Fallout, enough to feel the sting of waiting for a week to see more show. We're holding out as long as we can to start; we'll see how long we last. Grib wants to watch it, but he doesn't remember what happened before, and watching the recap just made him think that he had a brain parasite with an incredibly selective appetite.
(CW)TB out.
