The Dangers Of Nostalgia

Words on the past + the record of the week

I need an alarm clock. I know there’s one on my phone, but that’s the problem - you have to look at the phone to shut the alarm off, and before you know it, you’re lost in a doomscroll before the sun is even done rising.

That’s how I found my new favorite Instagram account. They post VHS videos from the late 90s and early 2000s. Faceless footage that looks like it could’ve been pulled from my family’s home movie collection. Or your family’s. The faceless approach makes it so it feels like it was part of your own past. You can project yourself onto it, which people love to do.

Credit: @yourpastreality on IG

There’s a clip of a vague suburban town during winter, the glow of streetlamps creating that magical light that reflects off snow blanketed streets. Another clip captures fall, and seeing the car lined street with all the vehicles of that era—before they started making every vehicle look exactly the same—was oddly comforting.

I lay there thinking about it. Wondering if it was soothing because that version of America was better, or because I was a kid in that era and life was simpler as that’s what being a kid is. I couldn’t figure it out, so I gave up and started my day.

I met Greg at the studio around 11am to prepare for a live in-studio session. Except for a few zoom calls, Greg and I were strangers to each other at this point, so we were getting to know each other as we worked. Swapping out lenses on cameras and positioning microphones while checking levels as we unfolded the small details of our lives to each other, one by one. There was a lot of common ground. We both came to LA for the artistic community, won’t touch meat but still eat fish, and are both married men.

I told him about my wedding in Mexico last year. About the joy of meeting my wife’s family who still lives down there. He told me about his wedding, which was small, as it needed to be because same-sex marriage was still illegal when he and his partner decided to tie the knot.

It feels like it should be a black and white photo in my high school history book. Like we’re decades beyond the day when it became legal for everyone to marry whoever they want, but it was basically yesterday. I remember the fifty state ruling in 2015, but I wasn’t anywhere near getting married, so I guess the weight of it didn’t really hit me. But now, standing beside someone that was not far from me in age, telling me they did the thing that I did last year, but they had to do it differently because it was against the law—I suddenly felt stupid.

Maybe stupid isn’t the word. No, I actually do think that’s the word. I felt stupid for engaging in nostalgia. For not realizing that the reason things were simpler 25 years ago is that the complicated stuff was swept under the rug. It was simpler because we didn’t know everything could and likely would cause us cancer. It was simpler because there was no body cam footage. It was simpler because we didn’t talk about it.

There was another post that came up that day while doomscrolling. Hyundai designed a concept car that looks straight out of the 80s. Every bit of its aesthetic design is a tribute to the era, but it’s been modernized with all the improvements of today. I laughed as I went to the comment section on the post, finding that the top 10 to 15 were all of my friends. The comments were all virtually the same—“MAKE THIS PLEASE,” or “I will buy this immediately.”

The 2024 Hyundai Grandeur

Because we all want it. We all want what we had then. Whatever it was that was captured in that grainy footage of manicured lawns and seasonal shifts. Whatever it was that we lost. We just want to do it right on this go, and we want to make sure everyone’s allowed to feel it this time around.

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I released a new single last Friday, which is baked in nostalgia of a different era. It’s the type of song I never thought I’d put out, as I always had an aversion to anything that seemed to want to trick the listener into thinking it was of a different era than the one in which it was released. But it just came out of me, and it felt more dishonest to mold and shape it in some grand attempt to reinvent the wheel. I liked that it was raw. That the guitars were a little out of tune and the drums weren’t totally on the grid. I liked that my voice was shaky at points. My whole process with music these days seems to be more and more about a snapshot than the sculpting of the thing. Anyway, that’s far too many words for something you can just listen to. Enjoy.

Listen to "Never Learnt To Pray"

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THE RECORD CLUB

Last week’s selection was Sharon Van Etten - Remind Me Tomorrow (2019)

You can find my ramblings on last week’s record in the comment section below.

This week’s selection is…

Week #15
Oasis - The Masterplan (1998)