Nostalgia is a worn-out subject nowadays. There’s a widely recognized nostalgia boom in pop culture, everything’s retro or remake. On the other hand, the impact of nostalgia on actual real-life societal issues and politics has been written about by many people smarter than me. In the indie web / small web circles nostalgia is even more of a commonplace subject: many people are drawn to hand-coded websites precisely because of the nostalgic quality. I’m not sure if there’s anything new to say about nostalgia. But I’m doing my part and growing the pile of online writing about it.
To be as honest as possible, I have to admit that I have a tendency towards nostalgia. It's a bit peculiar, considering that I often complain about people reminescing the past so sentimentally. Sometimes the past just isn’t worth that. Sometimes it’s just repackaged kids-these-days. Sometimes the dislike comes from trying to avoid my own intense nostalgia. (The passage of time makes me uneasy. After all, as a little kid I sometimes started crying because the “day had gone to quickly”.) It’s less a longing and more of a sudden wave of recognition. It doesn't have to be a clearly-defined physical sensation, but a feeling of a certain atmosphere. A feeling of a feeling gone past.
A physical sensation helps, though. Smells are powerful at evoking memories, that's common wisdom. I'm sometimes thrown off by the flower smell of a certain cheap liquid hand soap. It brings me to a certain part of Covid lockdowns, trying my best to understand how to live in an unfamiliar city when not knowing anyone. If I had to choose memories to lovingly reminescence, to experience purposeful nostalgia, very few things from that time would be on the list. But nostalgia always has the component of longing (despite that I just said that it’s not the main point for me). I don’t understand why I would want to experience that time and place again, but the soap makes me think so.
Music is another commonly cited agent for nostalgia. There’s the obvious, the songs that have been marked by a certain time of your life. A lovely universal personal experience. I’m not going to talk about that now, as it reveals very little about the music and too much about me. But there are other ways for musical nostalgia! For some reason, there are songs that have the nostalgic quality from the first listen. Just like I had heard them earlier in some distant past. It’s false nostalgia, anemoia, a convincing emotional illusion. (Sometimes these blend together: falsely nostalgic songs might gain real nostalgia by association!) I have considered compiling a list of songs that create that feeling: from Toby Fox’s Undertale soundtrack pieces (which many other people have regarded as intensely nostalgic! I am not the only one!) to the guitar riffs of some 90’s rock. It’s a topic that would deserve an essay, not this introductory blog post.
The best source for nostalgic recognition might still be just experiencing the seasons. They come and go, and the same varieties of weather occur roughly at the same parts of the year. It’s a terribly efficient way to re-experience old memories. It does require a place in addition to a time: the nostalgia of back-to-school early-autumn berry-picking yellow-leaves time doesn’t hit me as acutely anymore, because I live geographically away from it. The climate and vegetation are slightly different, it’s not the same season here in early September as it was in my hometown when I was a six-year-old trying to build a castle out of fallen branches in the forest, or a ten-year-old walking across the schoolyard in the mornings that have suddenly gotten colder after the summer.
As a bitter return I’ve gotten dozens of other nostalgias after moving. At the beginning of this year's September I noticed it was just as mellow and warm as it was years ago, the trees were full of apples and the world was slightly too still on the long afternoons. I had an urge to return to the paths I used to take, and stare at the beautiful houses and yards where the late summer bloomed like it always has done.
I have an unpleasant specific nostalgia related to late winter with the noon’s blinding sunlight on the snow. (What will happen to this when snow becomes a rarer occurence? Will the rising temperatures lessen everyones seasonal nostalgias, as the seasons won’t repeat similarly anymore? Or will it intensify the longing?) I have no clue why I dislike it so much, apart from the fact that those beautiful sceneries were often accompanied by less-than pleasant skiing experiences. Hopefully it will gain positive stereotypically nostalgic qualities or at least fade away into obscurity in my mind. I still have a nostalgia of the childhood Christmas, but isn’t it an inevitable response to the culture around it? A large portion of Christmas songs are just reminescing childhood! No wonder there’s a ton of winter nostalgia. (Although there is also a very recognizable concept of a “childhood summer”: it never rains, the days are endless and carefree, etc.) I assume that it’s the very natural consequence of a major holiday season.
But in terms of nostalgic seasons, autumn is the main culprit for me. Is it the memory of a new school year starting? Or the bittersweetness of an old summer ending? Either way, the season has partly inspired me to think about the subject. I’m sure I’ll return to it, be it in terms of writing or the aforementioned playlist.
(I do recognise and experience internet nostalgia too, even though I’ve just long-windedly described the nostalgic phenomena most related to the real physical world. Some day I might even write about it too.)