Milestones in nostalgia
It's been fourteen months to the day since I graduated from law school, and this morning I think I crossed a key psychological threshold. As I was driving from Knoxville to Nashville at the ungodly hour of 6:30 on a Sunday morning (to catch a flight to Denver, natch), I hooked up my iPod to the car's tape teck and cued up two bands -- first Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers, then Flogging Molly -- that I discovered while at Notre Dame. (They both played at Legends, f.k.a. Senior Bar, during my second or third year, and I attended both concerts and enjoyed both immensely.*) I used to routinely play their CDs on my car stereo while driving around South Bend, so the music is indelibly associated with that period in my life. And as I listened to it this morning I found myself getting nostalgic: for law school, for Notre Dame, even for the 'Bend itself.
This isn't the first time I've looked back fondly on my law school / Notre Dame experience, obviously; far from it. But there's a difference, I think, between recalling (and missing) individual aspects of past experiences -- specific people, places, events, etc. -- and feeling a sense of nostalgia about a previous era in one's life. Nostalgia is far more broad and generalized than memory: it can somehow encapsulate an entire three-year period into a single song or mental picture or brief recollection, which may itself be a composite of various discrete recollections, fused into a vague sense of memory and loss: "I miss that place," or that time in my life, or whatever.
Nostalgia is also, of course, fuzzy, and it involves some reinventing of history. It is the form of memory that recalls not the details of a thing, but a soft-focused, mentally transmogrified version thereof, with all the bad stuff edited out (or at least pushed to one side). So never mind that, back when I was actually driving around South Bend listening to Stephen Kellogg's "See You Later, See You Soon" or Flogging Molly's "Rebels of the Sacred Heart," I was as often as not stressing about schoolwork I hadn't done, or a looming final exam, or my job search, or some petty bloggy or law-school drama, or the South Bend permacloud. None of that unpleasantness seeps into nostalgia. Instead, the thought of driving around South Bend reminds me of a vague sense of excitement and freedom and discovery and camaraderie and the last vestiges of youth. Not to beautiful spring and autumn days, and football weekends, and the Dome, and...
Well, you get the idea. :)
And yet, nostalgia is a happy emotion tinged with sadness, because it recalls -- in the fondest light possible -- things that are done, and gone, and over with. I'll never again be 23, setting out on the grand new adventure of law school on a gorgeous spring day in the Midwest. I'll never again be 25, enjoying one last night at the Backer with my school friends. Not that I'd really want to be -- I very much like being 26, father of the cutest 6-month-old on the planet (no really, they've done studies), husband to my beautiful Becky, law clerk to a fantastic judge, living in the wonderful city of Knoxville -- but still, the inexorability of time's forward march brings with it a certain intrinsic melancholy. J.R.R. Tolkien nailed this when he imbued the immortal Elves with a sense of profound sadness underneath their wisdom and grace, for immortality would be sad. An immortal being would have a very, very long list of things to be nostalgic about. After a while, it would get to be too much, I think.
I'm a very nostalgic person, which is why I think (and hope) I will always have a strong drive to remain active and vibrant and energetic, constantly doing new things and making new memories. If I didn't, I imagine the weight of all the old memories would become a burden rather than a blessing. But that won't happen as long as I keep doing and experiencing things that will someday themselves be worthy of getting nostalgic about. (And is there any doubt that, years from now, when I listen to my current musical playlist -- WDVX's bluegrass repertoire, Great Big Sea's Fortune's Favour, Bradley Walker's Highway of Dreams, and so forth -- I'll fondly remember those heady, youthful days when I was a brand-new daddy? Oh, to be young again!)
*Coincidentally, it turns out that Stephen Kellogg and Flogging Molly are both in Denver this weekend for the Mile High Festival. Alas, I can't afford an $85 day pass. The concert at Legends was free. :)
Anyway... on an unrelated note, I think The One Blog's first week has been pretty successful, no? It has been for me, at least. I stuck to my time limit, give or take a couple of minutes, and I didn't feel either deprived or burdened. Some tweaking to the limits may be necessary, particularly now that Weather Nerd has been launched, but overall, I think my system is working pretty well.
Better yet, it's Sunday, so the clock just reset! :) Moreover, most of the time I spent writing this post doesn't even count, because I wrote it on the plane, which means it's technically "Moblogging"... woohoo! (Heh. Always the lawyers and their loopholes.)
This isn't the first time I've looked back fondly on my law school / Notre Dame experience, obviously; far from it. But there's a difference, I think, between recalling (and missing) individual aspects of past experiences -- specific people, places, events, etc. -- and feeling a sense of nostalgia about a previous era in one's life. Nostalgia is far more broad and generalized than memory: it can somehow encapsulate an entire three-year period into a single song or mental picture or brief recollection, which may itself be a composite of various discrete recollections, fused into a vague sense of memory and loss: "I miss that place," or that time in my life, or whatever.
Nostalgia is also, of course, fuzzy, and it involves some reinventing of history. It is the form of memory that recalls not the details of a thing, but a soft-focused, mentally transmogrified version thereof, with all the bad stuff edited out (or at least pushed to one side). So never mind that, back when I was actually driving around South Bend listening to Stephen Kellogg's "See You Later, See You Soon" or Flogging Molly's "Rebels of the Sacred Heart," I was as often as not stressing about schoolwork I hadn't done, or a looming final exam, or my job search, or some petty bloggy or law-school drama, or the South Bend permacloud. None of that unpleasantness seeps into nostalgia. Instead, the thought of driving around South Bend reminds me of a vague sense of excitement and freedom and discovery and camaraderie and the last vestiges of youth. Not to beautiful spring and autumn days, and football weekends, and the Dome, and...
Well, you get the idea. :)
And yet, nostalgia is a happy emotion tinged with sadness, because it recalls -- in the fondest light possible -- things that are done, and gone, and over with. I'll never again be 23, setting out on the grand new adventure of law school on a gorgeous spring day in the Midwest. I'll never again be 25, enjoying one last night at the Backer with my school friends. Not that I'd really want to be -- I very much like being 26, father of the cutest 6-month-old on the planet (no really, they've done studies), husband to my beautiful Becky, law clerk to a fantastic judge, living in the wonderful city of Knoxville -- but still, the inexorability of time's forward march brings with it a certain intrinsic melancholy. J.R.R. Tolkien nailed this when he imbued the immortal Elves with a sense of profound sadness underneath their wisdom and grace, for immortality would be sad. An immortal being would have a very, very long list of things to be nostalgic about. After a while, it would get to be too much, I think.
I'm a very nostalgic person, which is why I think (and hope) I will always have a strong drive to remain active and vibrant and energetic, constantly doing new things and making new memories. If I didn't, I imagine the weight of all the old memories would become a burden rather than a blessing. But that won't happen as long as I keep doing and experiencing things that will someday themselves be worthy of getting nostalgic about. (And is there any doubt that, years from now, when I listen to my current musical playlist -- WDVX's bluegrass repertoire, Great Big Sea's Fortune's Favour, Bradley Walker's Highway of Dreams, and so forth -- I'll fondly remember those heady, youthful days when I was a brand-new daddy? Oh, to be young again!)
*Coincidentally, it turns out that Stephen Kellogg and Flogging Molly are both in Denver this weekend for the Mile High Festival. Alas, I can't afford an $85 day pass. The concert at Legends was free. :)
Anyway... on an unrelated note, I think The One Blog's first week has been pretty successful, no? It has been for me, at least. I stuck to my time limit, give or take a couple of minutes, and I didn't feel either deprived or burdened. Some tweaking to the limits may be necessary, particularly now that Weather Nerd has been launched, but overall, I think my system is working pretty well.
Better yet, it's Sunday, so the clock just reset! :) Moreover, most of the time I spent writing this post doesn't even count, because I wrote it on the plane, which means it's technically "Moblogging"... woohoo! (Heh. Always the lawyers and their loopholes.)
posted by Brendan Loy at
7/20/2008 04:57:00 PM
