Haunted

Nostalgia has been on my mind lately. Not for any certain point in my life, to be honest there's no time in my life I'd like to revisit, the present always seems better than before even when things aren't going great. But I love old photographs, home movies from the 60s and old films and songs that seem to echo through time.

I love the idea of nostalgia, a longing for things lost. I love that I feel it for something I never experienced - I create this image of a better time that never existed. Why does a picture of my grandparents looking cool and beautiful make me feel that they had something I never can? Why do the weddings I attend in my life feel like cheap imitations of the ones from 2 or 3 generations ago?

It's strange how the things before me seem artificial when things long past are processed to me as a more genuine experience. I could say that culture is more cynical today, and it is, but cynicism has always existed. I don't think that if I life 60 years earlier I'd be any less of a discontented brat. Hell, maybe I'd indulge in a whole other kind of hedonistic lifestyle appropriate to that era.

But there's that weird nostalgia creeping in again. As is living in another era I'd be this cool badass staring out from the photograph. Not giving a shit.

I recently uncovered hauntology, this idea where the past is always here no matter what. I gave it a lot of thought and it's become a bit of a theme in my thinking. From wikipedia: "The idea suggests that the present exists only with respect to the past, and that society after the end of history will begin to orient itself towards ideas and aesthetics that are thought of as rustic, bizarre or "old-timey"; that is, towards the "ghost" of the past."

I see a lot of this in today's fashions, but also a lot of forward thinking aesthetics. I don't view either negatively, and often fluctuate between a love of the new and the comfort of the classic. Oddly, I find myself relating this to fashion as I write - picturing new runway looks opposed to the classics - yet the new is still recalling the old in that world too. I read many designers referencing the archives this year while trying to twist them into a new idea.

I think something I'd like to achieve in art right now is a feeling of nostalgia applied through the thought that the present is coexisting with the past. The present doesn't really exist does it? The feelings that we channel through select moments are what lasts. Take that picture, let it grow old and let it take on new life through new eyes. The story of that photo is different for every viewer.