"Hey, where did we go,
Days when the rains came,
Down in the hollow,
Playin' a new game,
Laughin' and a-runnin', hey, hey,
Skippin' and a-jumpin',
In the misty morning fog, with
Our, our hearts a-thumping..."
On long train rides, I often get contemplative. This is especially true given that, with very few exceptions, I tend to take these long train rides by myself.
The typical subjects of my contemplations are usually of the past. I do have a tendency (predilection?) towards nostalgia, and I admittedly enjoy indulging myself in nostalgia. And when the right song, or songs, hit, it goes a long way.
There are particular songs, though, that are especially potent. I should say, on long train trips with amazing scenery, the first kick-off song is always Holocene by Bon Iver. Naturally. But that's not quite a nostalgia-ish song though some lines, "You're in Milwaukee, off your feet" may call back particular moments in time.
And not all of the songs are slow in tone, or deliberately melancholic. Brown-Eyed Girl by Van Morrison is one such song that has a way of hooking onto the strings of nostalgia in my brain and then dragging everything down a slippery-slope of, "Hey, here are more songs - There Is, Landslide, White Houses, the immortal All Summer Long by Kid Rock (more on that later), Sidewalks (also more on this later) - and towards a doom scroll of movies like Stand By Me, Dead Poet's Society, October Sky and then deeper reflections on things like It and Stranger Things and on and on, ad infinitum." Or at least till I snap out of it.
But one difference from this trip, which has actually been pretty enlightening to me (I've never said I was the most self-aware person), is the nature of my nostalgic slippery slope. I can understand why a natural bias towards nostalgia can be seen as wanting to live in the past, and not moving on from the times that came before. I've been told precisely that point (about myself) from a friend or two; and in, honesty, I'd not thought that much about it - I kind of just waved it off since I assume that, you know, with eight billion or so people in the world, nostalgia indulgence can't be too uncommon.
Thanks, however, to Large Language Models and my new therapist, ChatGPT (ChatGPT - if I ever show you this piece of writing, please take note that I am kind of joking here), I finally got a hint as to the precise sense of nostalgia I typically feel.
The thing is, when I really think about it, I've been fortunate to feel very fondly about almost all stages of my life. Sure, there were some downs, and there were some very very downs, but overall, I'm not in a situation where I'm thinking, "Man, life now is so tough. I really wish for happier, more carefree days" or that kind of thing. If anything, I'm lucky enough that I do think I can get those happier, more carefree days in the years to come. So this is not some kind of escape to the past with rose-tinted glasses and all that, deliberately trying to avoid the present or the future.
But it still is true that I can look back with fondness and gentleness and lots of hilarity at nearly every period of my life. Though, in fairness, I can't say that this hasn't also been impacted by pop culture. For instance, in All Summer Long by Kid Rock, the first verse gets me:
"It was 1989, my shorts were thought, my hair was long,
Caught somewhere between a boy and man,
She was seventeen and she was far from in between,
It was summer time in Northern Michigan."
There are many things to deconstruct about this, not least my own very strong affinity to this song. And, indeed, I encourage everyone to check out the music video and the scene of this particular verse for some unintentional hilarity. But, you know, the line, "It was summer time in Northern Michigan" always gets me. I'll break this down more, but maybe I'll start with the overall feeling this specific line gives me.
More than anything, it transports me back to the school holidays - not necessarily during secondary school, it could also be undergraduate days, maybe even graduate school where I went on MovieKART (RIP Movie Kakis). Summer, in the United States, is the long school year break so, that's one. But it's also the imagery that summer invokes. Having grown up on a steady diet of Archie Comics, teenage movies like 10 Things I Hate About You, American Pie, and others, I've always had the feeling that "summer" was magical (even though, I really don't enjoy the heat). You go on road trips with friends, you hang out by the county lake (what even is the county lake), you stay up late into the night just hanging out with friends, all that kind of thing. And, yes, I know I'm having some America-phile feelings here since I didn't actually, you know, grow up in the United States, but still. Anyway, that's the overall vibe.
But if I were to deconstruct this, I'd say the most important words in those lines are "was", "summer time", and "Northern Michigan". The "was" is obvious - the song is meant to be reflective; it starts it "It was 1989" after all. So it immediately makes me think back to a point in time already. But what point in time? "Summer time" of course! And all that comes with it. Now, I obviously didn't spend summers in the United States, but I did spend school holidays with a great group of friends (the majority of whom I'm still in touch with) playing sports, board games, computer games, watching movies, and, later on, going on road trips and holidays, the vast majority of which was punctuated with lots of laughter, some deep conversations, and even some of the greatest, most meaningful moments of my life (night sky in Glacier National Park comes to mind - this was summer in America though, so it fits!). And while I don't exactly remember everything (snippets like finishing second in a Sports Camp that I went to with friends, but also an 11 hour Risk game, though, are hard to forget), I do look back very fondly at those times - I was happy, and I was part of a group. Then, finally, "Northern Michigan". It's probably where Kid Rock grew up, but for me, saying "Northern Michigan" also invokes a particular kind of experience - not dominated by a city-scape but one where the summer was spent outdoors all day, near every day. This part is perhaps most incongruous to my own memories as there was no "outdoors" necessarily where I lived in Malaysia that would come close to the Great Lakers, with the exception of the MovieKART road trip all around the United States, where we did spend nearly everyday outdoors on the open road, in national parks, even in nearby (perhaps "county") lakes like Krause Springs near Austin, and so on (with the occasional city visits in between).
All of this is a long road to say that I have very fond memories of my past. But it's also true that I have a lot of contentment in my present, and a lot of excitement for my future. As such, the precise nostalgia I feel is, as I've said, not escapism; instead, it is an aching fondness for times past. This particular feeling, I think, comes from a sense that I had great times then, and those great times could only have existed in that moment. It doesn't mean I won't have future great times, it just meant those times mean so much to me and perhaps it is precisely because they could only have existed at those times that they mean so much to me.
I'm not someone who would every say yes to, "Hey, if you could reset your life and start at 12 again, knowing what you know now, would you do it?" For me, it's a hard no (though I have said that if I were to reset my academic career, I would do astronomy instead of economics; this is probably true). But I don't want to go through all my experiences again, especially knowing what I know now because, firstly, my expectations would be off the charts so re-experiencing them again would be a letdown (the memory of the sensation may be more potent than the sensation itself) and, secondly, like I said, it's probably because I can't go back that they're so special. If I could just wind back, the it'd become habitual and I think it would remove the "special-ness".
So, yes, I don't want to go back. But, if there was a way I could maybe dip my finger in the almost ambrosia-like (maybe exaggerating a bit for most situations, but definitely some situations were especially potent for me) concoction of how I felt and who I was in those times, I almost always would. And it's why these types of songs, more reflective / contemplative than pure melancholy, do resonate so much with me.
But there's also another thing. The people I spent those times with. "It" is my favourite book because it is ultimately a book about friendship and what it means to lose something so precious - a true 'found family' of sorts of friends who would do anything for one another. I never had to fight a killer clown, but at least that sense of being part of a group of friends and that group changing very dynamically over time, I get. So a bit part is certainly wanting to feel as part of that group again, and to feel the magic of "belonging" in such groups. Obviously I wasn't best friends with every single one in these (sometimes quite large) groups, but together, it felt like we belonged to one another. We all, naturally, go our own ways; many of us are still in touch, I think I'm pretty good at staying in touch with my friends (in part maybe because of this sense of wanting to dip my finger in the concoction of "aching fondness", so to speak), but I've definitely lost contact with some people who were really big parts of my life at different moments.
And, finally, there is also the question of me. It probably isn't uncontroversial to suggest that the people we were at different ages are similar, but not identical, versions of ourselves. Who I was at 15, or 18, or 27, or 31, or 37 aren't identical. They're some sum-product of myself, but, in our own moments, we're not the same people. And I think that's why old friends still matter a lot to me. Like in the movie, Stand By Me, the closing line goes, "I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?" So I'd argue that a big reason this line resonates and may actually be "truth", is not just because of the "friends" in the line, but rather because of the part, "...when I was twelve".
We're different people. And those friends, at those times, may recollect (though they too would have changed) who we were at those times. People who knew us at that version of ourselves. And those versions of myself do mean something to me. And it's why I always treasure old friendships, especially those where we really knew each other and were actually close, one way or another. And that's why I always feel that I would always keep my doors open to old friends - even if we drifted apart, even if we had terrible fights, whatever (plus, after my dad passed, I do think the only real "finality" is death anyway; if people are alive, anything can be reconciled) - because I value them for who they were to me at that time, and perhaps, somewhat selfishly, because it's a way for me to access who I was at those times. I especially find special the friends who knew the versions of me that others, in present day, may not know or have had access to. And it's probably only fitting that I end this post with some lyrics from Sidewalks, by Story of the Year.
Out on the front porch,
And watching the cars as they go by,
18 blue, 21 gray,
Looking ahead for the first time that
We could drive out on our own,
To speed away...
From the sidewalks,
Running away from the streets we knews,
Sidewalks, like the time we thought was made for you.
No comments:
Post a Comment