Nostalgia: A poem and some rationalization

the endearing design

of some small scene

unwinds

like a mixtape

in ribbons

of dissonant whines, and

after the hiss ends

in the ashes of incense

where weakness

rode pretense

through habitual weekends

of hormonal pageantry

parts portrayed passably

kinship and missteps

both real

and imagined

the ant-farm is shaken

and memory's mistaken

for past

and for permanence

over coffee and bacon

now you pray

for the echo

of those dizzying tempos

though they warped and

distorted and

skipped

from the get-go

but the notes left behind

in this space

redefined

form a pattern

uncommon, but

rarely unkind

There is an element of nostalgia that accompanies starting this blog; both as a reminder of the days when Jamil and I got together to hash out our old zine, and also in the way it documents our current times for a future, and almost immediate nostalgia. The constant presence of nostalgia in almost all aspects of the modern world seems to be one of the defining features of our times. From the fetishizing of all things “retro” to the collecting of photographs and videos, like canned goods, for some nuclear fallout of our minds. The jump-cut narratives of our memories come pre-edited via Facebook and Flickr pages, and blogs just like this. Nostalgia becomes so immediate that it often gets confused with experience. As the character, Max, says in Noah Baumbach's Kicking and Screaming, “I'm nostalgic for conversations I had yesterday. I've begun reminiscing events before they even occur. I'm reminiscing this right now. I can't go to the bar because I've already looked back on it in my memory... and I didn't have a good time.”

So is all this nostalgia just arrested development, idle masturbation, or even a tool to maintain a certain hierarchy of power? Maybe it's a bit of all these things, but I like to think that nostalgia can have its benefits. In the weeks to come, I'm confident that I'll end up waxing on sentimentally about my recollection of certain events, such as the aforementioned birth of Vent's first incarnation. Now, I say “my recollection” because there is a constructed element to almost any memory, and my memory could vary greatly from that of someone else involved in the same event. Memories often feel like a movie, half-watched from another room while cooking dinner. It's this element of memory, the narrative aspect, that reminds me of something I heard Bobcat Goldthwait say, and I paraphrase, that “we become better people by living up to the lies we tell the world about ourselves”. It's a dangerous philosophy for sure, like most soundbites are if adhered to too strictly, but I think it has some truth to it and can also be applied to lies we tell ourselves about ourselves. We feel nostalgia for moments, but in many ways we feel it more for the stories we have told and retold ourselves and others about those moments. Sometimes we're pacified by these tales of past glory or sometimes we're overwhelmed and discouraged. For the sake of this blog, however, I hope to use my nostalgia as a catalyst for growth and action, and maybe, from time to time, a bit of idle masturbation won't hurt.