Wave Goodbye

I have found that when a new year is upon our society we celebrate by saturating ourselves in the memory of the old year. Lots of "best of 2010", or "top 100 of the decade", etc.  This year I had an epiphany as I  was submersed in retro media. I became more aware of how our cultural fascination with nostalgia is shaping artistic expression. Once I considered that life imitates art, and that life informs the artist,  I noticed an unnerving pattern of addiction that has taken root in our cultural extroversion's and in communication in general.

Nostalgia can promote a warm fuzzy comforting feeling. To me it parallels heroin in so many ways. Nostalgia is the crutch that atrophies creativity. It also very clearly enables the fear of change that so many of us suffer from. It can become the path to which we abscond from our accountability to the present. Nostalgia makes us weak and it takes personal and emotional strength to bear the responsibility of creating what will either be a good/bad; day, week, month, year, life.

Don’t believe me?

Ask a band to describe their music. As a musician it’s a conversation I have quite regularly. Whenever I pose the question people rarely respond with adjectives. Instead they provide nostalgic references “its like the Elliot Smith meets Tupac.” You may as well have just responded “its like…been done before, remember?.”

 And yes, no shit its “been done” before, but it wasn’t you doing it. As individuals we have the ability to create the uniqueness of presence in our artistic endeavors and with the things we occupy ourselves with everyday.
Its not the red and blue that makes the painting. Its how you used them.. Don’t define your craft as the glue holding established and relatable entities together.
There is also the, "one trick pony" debacle. A "one trick pony" is an artistic conundrum created by our attachment to the past. If an artist finds success be it financial or in appreciation, while utilizing the tools of their craft in a specific way, the memory of their success will create a compulsion to apply the same specificity to recreating the feeling of a job well done.As we all know, this creates artistic bloating and stagnation.

People are defeating their artistic pursuits because nostalgia is such a reliable and referential crutch. What’s worse is when an artist becomes dependent on this formula to produce new material, or when the public becomes dependent on that formula and become unforgiving when not being fed their memories.

Nostalgia can be the verbal joint being passed between friends and acquaintances.

Take a  first generation  Hippy  or an early 80's LA punker. If you ask them to discuss the zeitgeist that was so formative to their identity you can watch the glow in their eyes as they retreat into the illusion of safety created by their memories. All of their verbal and physical idiosyncrasy's are indicative that they are communicating the memory of "better days". But, better days they were not. both cultures are marked by oppression, and the unification of the oppressed, then the bitter dissolution of the groups as they became community's that imposed themselves on themselves.

Still, you can see the pain on their faces as they return to the present to resume a life that  "peaked" years ago. 

Peaking is a concept that would have no influence without nostalgia. I think people reach the perceived peak when they stop creating their lives (for better or worse) and start letting their lives create them.

 Like a narcotic, nostalgia can consume a persons ability to appreciate the present and relegate ones vision of the future to model a world wherein those nuro-chemical reactions created by their memories are more accessible.

A world where a culture thrives on recreatability.

Holy shit, that’s the one we live in now!

I have a resolution in this new year.

I will reconcile my attachment to the past. I will implant a new impulse into the nuronet that's formed around my nostalgia that reminds me that the only way to honor my attachment to the past is to create a present that is just as emotionally, creatively, and intellectually valuable.

Your dedicated inane brain,
Corey Ferreira