Nostalgia Will Hit You as Hard as It Can

Those records you played are from 30 years ago. That movie you’ve streamed came out in 1977. Its creator has altered it so many times you don’t even remember where the cuts lines are. Nostalgia. Like a big Vegas casino pumping oxygen and free drinks into whoever’s gambling. It’s all over the culture, itchy and cringy and oh so familiar. How could it possible be bad for me? So many run headlong into its icky embrace. People will pick familiar suffering over the scary unknown because learning about new things is hard as it forces us to gain new knowledge of ourselves. Form some, this is a painful, unnecessary venture. But now that you accept feeling retro (once again), there will be no new learning today. It is an illusion which metastasis into delusion. You are quickly face-to-face with your own emerging fuddy duddy-ness.

Nostalgia is like a rash which you are convinced makes you look good. Better even. It’s the warm blanket you sweat into when overheated, sick or fucking. A cacophony of fluids archived into the fabric. At the time, it means nothing to you so why bother washing it. But one day, it feels old & worn so you put it under the bed and forget about it. Years later, you unbox that blanket and it is your new, favorite old thing. So many memories, you sigh to yourself, as you wrap it around your head like a skull toga. The lines on your face vanish, but it’s an endorphin rush, fake as the weight loss drug you buy off the internet. A false nod to the no longer young body you still inhabit like a crumbling house with a new coat of paint. You give it no mind. It’s a feeling, you think. The brain reels, submitting to the feels. A chemical cocktail in the bloodstream makes happy sadness inside you. A emotional experience akin to some form of mental illness. Memory making a fool of you again like every eyewitness to some horrible incident. The facts seemingly never adding up the way you thought they would. You would go talk with a professional to help sort this out, but it will only make it worse.  

Nostalgia. I am not immune to it’s easy charms. Case in point, I stumbled across the Fight Club 2 trailer on the internet a few weeks back and watched it with a ton of apprehension. Ten seconds into it, a weird mirth hit me as I saw an aged Narrator and graying Tyler Durden talk Marla, Project Mayhem and doing it all over again. One more big score before getting chucked out the mortality door! My emotions peeked, but I remained cautiously cynical. That in itself, made me feel like I was in my 20s again. Likely by design. I might want to see this sequel! Yet, it was an aberration. A straight-up fake stitched together with Fight Club footage, other film footage and convincing AI trickery. I was the target audience and the fool fooled into that black chasm, convinced there was something special there. Maybe drugs or candy!  Like sugar or illicit substances, they give much in the moment as they twist us into older versions of ourselves.

That very day, I bought a used copy of the graphic novel Fight Club 2 off Amazon. I streamed The Dust Brothers film soundtrack. I may have fondled my very own first edition, hard cover copy of Fight Club. For a few moments, my world levitated to the year 1999. I was living in the city of Chicago. It was my home and playground. That was the year I interviewed Chuck Palahniuk for a now defunct bookstore chain. The would would be entering the 21st century. The penance to the previous years was that planes were going to drop out of the sky as the world went dark from Y2K.

Fight Club tried to teach empathy & individuality while leaned into entropy & brutality. You have failed, it preached, but that is all part of the plan. You fail to evolve. You fail to understand. You fail just like we are all failing the planet. Shitting the bed of the present and future, all at the same time. Multitasking a more miserable world for our children. You must give up because there is nothing else you can do. Everything, everywhere is moving and everything must change. It’s a part of this living game. The amusement park known as life. I suspect our souls were shoved into these biological vessels for a while to see what happens. We are light bodies in the realm of having human experiences. The ride is the reward. Eat it. Love it. Hug it. Don’t run away. Reality is for people without imagination. Reality bites. You don’t have to accept this reality, but you must bear to live it.

But some final Tyler Durden-like advice: Don’t forget you are a fucking supernova. You have more because you are more. Let the blind bask in the sun, worship the moon as it rises. You are that sun and that moon. Warm and cold radiance. Reinventing continuously so they cannot touch you. The nostalgic fear the new. Make them afraid.