rusty_halo | nostalgia

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nostalgia

I haven't been reading LJ, um, pretty much at all, lately. (Profuse apologies, please don't hate me, etc.)

I've been steeped in this wierd fit of nostalgia for the past couple weeks. I guess it really hit me that an era of my life is OVER, and an era of culture that felt like MY era is over, and there's no going back.

I'm 22 and I feel so OLD.

I have this tendency to live in the past, and to brood on it endlessly. I tell myself to be like Spike, but my natural tendency is to be like Angel. Sitting in the dark and mourning the past instead of getting up and moving forward. (I hate that about myself.)

Back in the day when I was an 11-year-old Anne Rice fan, reading "Interview with the Vampire," I remember being really struck by the way she described the feeling of time going by, the world moving on without you, being stuck in the past. Lestat, it seemed, get could over that, move forward, and continue to live in the world, but Louis couldn't. And as cool as Lestat was (and as irritating as Louis was), I totally would've been Louis.

I mean, I can barely even read books that cover several generations, because I get so upset as the time passes and leaves people behind.

It's just, I don't know, MTV is all crap now, and the radio isn't even worth listening to. I walk into the record store, page through the music magazines, and don't have a clue who any of these people are. (Except, Scott Weiland is still alive, and in a band with Guns N Roses?? What??)

I miss the days when "grunge," or whatever stupid name the media wanted to call it, was on top of the world, and I couldn't imagine it not being there. Music with integrity and passion and honesty and darkness and beauty. I miss the overflowing sincerity of young Eddie Vedder, and Chris Cornell back when he had long hair, and Alice in Chains promising to prove their detractors wrong and last a good long time. I miss cassette tapes, and pouring through tiny lyric booklets and album notes, and NEW records from my favorite bands. God, I miss knowing that a new CD by a band I loved was coming out, and going to the record store to buy it on its first day, and listening to it for months memorizing every sound. I miss the fascinating articles and photos of my favorite artists that I'd find in every single issue of Rolling Stone or Spin. I miss radio DJs who played the music I liked, and knew what music news I would want to hear. I miss being part of a community just by turning on the radio. I miss Alice in Chains on Rockline, and Pearl Jam doing Self Pollution Radio. I miss the boy I had a crush on wearing a Mad Season T-shirt and drawing this amazing picture of Alice in Chains on his Spanish book cover. I miss talking about this music for hours with my best friend Danielle, and writing parody stories about Pearl Jam as a bunch of gang members. I miss falling asleep listening to my favorite records, and waking up every morning to a room covered in these musicians' photos, and pulling out my sketchpad and spending hours drawing them, while listening to them on the radio, and listening to them on my headphones on the way to school, and writing their lyrics in my notebooks, and drawing their pictures on the back of my school papers. I miss collecting t-shirts, ordering from those mini-catalogs you'd find in magazines like Hit Parader, and then getting their big catalogs in the mail and paging through them for hours. I miss waking up in the morning to choose which XL band t-shirt I'd wear that day, along with my ripped jeans and Converse sneakers. I miss the NIRVANA necklace that I wore every day for years. I miss, every time I found a cool band photo, being able to tack it up on my wall in the huge collage that was my room. I miss dreaming about these bands every single night, and having the songs that played in the background as I slept become incorporated into the dreams. And then exchanging dream stories with Danielle, and spending our lunch hours interpreting each others' dreams. I miss going to Princeton Record Exchange and spending hours looking through the LPs and import CDs and trying to figure out how to ration my allowance out. I even miss Headbanger's Ball and Alternative Nation and Kurt Loder on MTV News. I miss staying up till all hours watching MTV trying to see older videos by bands I loved, the absolute joy that came with seeing a video that was new to me. I remember the squee of first seeing AIC's "Grind," or Pearl Jam doing "Porch" unplugged and Eddie writing PRO CHOICE on his arm, or watching Nirvana unplugged over and over and over and over....

THAT was my era, and it's really totally over, and I miss it.

I was actually talking about this with my dad, strangely enough. He loves the New York Yankees, so I asked why, and he said because he loved them when he was seven or eight years old. And when you love something at that age, you lack the critical screen that you might have as an adult, so you REALLY love it, and you're so young it's like it gets imprinted in your brain, so you grow up loving it, like loving it becomes a part of you. He pointed out that I'm the same way about Star Wars--if I saw it now, it's highly unlikely that I'd be such a devoted fan. (Which is true, though I'd probably still like The Empire Strikes Back no matter what.) And I guess the same is true with the music I grew up with.

It sucks because I don't think I'll ever experience that again. That formative growing up stage is done. I'm too critical, too picky, there's a wall there, a critical distance. I'll never love something so passionately and with such devotion again. Yeah, there's music or movies or TV that I like now, but it's not even close to the same level.

It was also, like, that was the first time I was really breaking away from my family and building my own identity. Being a teenager, growing up, and listening to that music are all intimately connected in my mind. I'm so grateful that that is the music that influenced me, and was there for me, during that period. My parents never talked to me about personal integrity, or about standing up for what you believe in, or that it's important to be yourself and not conform. The musicians I loved taught me that. Kurt Cobain taught me about gay rights, and Eddie Vedder talked to me about feminism and being pro-choice. It was him talking on Self Pollution Radio that got me to read Ms. Magazine. There was a quote I read from Eddie Vedder in early 1994 in Spin Magazine, something like "Just decide you want to be a certain way and go on. You end up being a little more free because of it. In doing so, you're expressing yourself as an individual--not necessarily as a group. It may produce rage and happiness but it will keep you alive inside." I was 11 years old, and no one had EVER told me anything like that before. I learned that there was this whole other world out there, that suburban conformity wasn't the be-all and end-all of life, from these guys. And when I was angry or hurt, when I hated my family and hated the phony suffocating conformity of where I was, I could put on this loud angry passionate REAL music and feel better.

It's not that I was blindly following them, it's that these were thoughts that I'd had already but hadn't developed. I didn't know anyone else felt the same way. Then I found these people who did, and who were using their position of power to help others, to try to make the world a better place.

Man, this all sounds so cheesy and lame. I don't think I'm explaining it right. Whatever--got to go back to work now anyway.

Sidenote: last night I was watching this tape I got off Ebay, and it had about a minute long clip of an interview at a RIP magazine party from '91 or '92. It was EDDIE VEDDER, LAYNE STALEY, and CHRIS CORNELL. All together, talking and joking. Quite possibly the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life.

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You're going to have such a hard time at 30.

My era was 1994-1996, Britpop. And I was 20 then. You should be in your prime now, or maybe you are and you don't see it yet (I really thought I miss the 80's and in the end I didn't).

So in ten years I'll be all nostalgic over Spike and BtVS and following James Marsters around to conventions? Naahh....

Well, okay, I guess I'll miss running All About Spike (I already miss that, my poor abandoned website). And I'll miss the friends I've made, and the wonderfully creative fan community, and the great fanfic, and the travel's kind of fun.... guess I ought to enjoy it while I can....

Nothing ever stays the same. Except my life which remains consistantly boring.

- don't SAY that!

It kind of gets better. In about, hrrm. 2-5 years, depending. Mind, I started feeling all you-kids-get-offa-my-lawn when I was 17.

Being as I'm *from* Seattle, my era actually ended around when your era began, in 1991, when all the things my friends and I listened to and liked (and in the cases of my friends who actually like live music, went to see at small shows) broke, and suddenly the cheersquad was wandering around humming songs from Sub-Pop bands. There's something disconcerting and just plain weird about your niche suddenly becoming mainstream instead of it being a secret handshake into a club of the like-minded.

(My first breakup was the night after the Nevermind record release party at Peaches, and the person breaking up with me was there, so our "this isn't working" talk was a long, weird, friendly discussion punctuated with talk about the previous night at Peaches.)

But, I digress. After a few years of feeling ancient before my time, time started to do something weird, where now five years ago seems like yesterday instead of a long time ago, and nothing seems as far in the past as it used to, back in the day. (I strongly suspect that this makes very little sense outside of my head. Ah well.)

Being as I'm *from* Seattle, my era actually ended around when your era began

You are so lucky. I always felt so guilty, like the hugest poser, for liking that music. I was an eleven year old from New Jersey; I really had no right whatsoever to listen to that music at all. But I couldn't help it, it meant the world to me anyway.

After a few years of feeling ancient before my time, time started to do something weird, where now five years ago seems like yesterday instead of a long time ago, and nothing seems as far in the past as it used to, back in the day.

That sounds really cool. I hope I start feeling that sometime soon....

I'm 22 and I feel so OLD.

::cough:: You know, I turned 41 last month, and could, therefore, be your actual mama without any 'child bride' nonsense, so...allow me to scoff. Lovingly, but scoffing, nonetheless. ;)

Well, I don't know, I felt ancient when I was 10, to be honest. It's just a comment about how I feel emotionally, not about physical age or anything like that.

There's a reason why I rarely have friends my own age, and why most of the people I talk to often are at least ten years older than me....

Jeezus, you feel old? My made years were back in the '80s, Nineteen-Eighty-effin'-Four right in the middle of my collegey experiece, when everything was all Prince and the Revolution and the original New Wave, early, early, early MTV and all the music was either about love-'em-if-you've-got-'em or overbearing tensions about the Cold War. Those were Reagan's years, and Thatcher's, and it was party on or be tense, or preferably both at once, because you knew when you were getting out of school it wasn't too damn likely there'd be a job...

And even with all that, if I look back, I can see the roots of my formative years going way farther back, into the '70s of my childhood, and everyone's post-hippie sensibilities about Love is Love and Peace, Man and Watergate. Kills me now to look around at everyone, starry-eyed like they've never, ever before seen something like a corrupt politician, like people didn't demonstrate in the streets or even bother to get het up about such funny things as human rights... Christ if it doesn't make me want to bounce people's head off tables, kick them in the ass so hard their insides blow out their ears, yell at them about their shit taste in music and don't you people know anything? And this is me at 40, this is me feeling mellow.

But funny thing? I lived here, where I do now, in San Francisco, during the era you were talking about, and although I was probably too old for the scene as you were into it, the music was there, and it still had the power, and I got it, and still do... that's the only lesson I've been able to pull out of the march of time so far, that things do keep moving and changing, and there's always something there even if you pulled past it or missed it the first time around... whole hellava big world filled with something new happening all the time, even if hidden in funny corners. Can't bring back the past, especially not the past that made you sharp and forged - god knows you only gets those moments once, even if you didn't know what they were at the time... but so easy to look back once you've had them and know them for what they were. As it would seem you are doing now.

Only young once, as they keep saying.

...okay, bizarre how that whole rant just bubbled up out of me. I guess this is a good illustration of how people get old and boring and yakking about their glory days. That would be me.

And I'm fairly sure this didn't help you feel less like the future's going to more of this sort of thing at all. Just slap me, will you?

That was fascinating. Don't apologize.

You came of age in a really interesting era, one that I wish I'd experienced.

And I know what you mean about people ignoring the past. I wasn't there either, but dude, just read some history! Ignore the past, doomed to repeat it, etc, etc....

You're right that there's always good new stuff happening. It's just hard to find, especially if you're like me and tend to cling to one thing utterly and completely. Moving on is hard.

Well, I'm still writing Buffy fic. Not really the poster child for moving on either. ; )

You'll always find something new to enthrall you, though. I can tell that much just by the level of passion you bring to things. That's what's really rare in this world, seems to me, that kind of lust for life. It's why it draws our eye so much when we see it, I think - the bright, hot fires are few and far between.

I can barely even read books that cover several generations, because I get so upset as the time passes and leaves people behind.

ME TOO! Gah. I always felt like a freak for that. *clings*

Don't know if this will make you feel less blue, but there's an article in the Times today about Eddie Vedder et al at the Vote for Change concert. Sounds like he's still kicking it.

ME TOO! Gah. I always felt like a freak for that.

Whoa. I had no clue anyone else was that strange. Neat. :)

Don't know if this will make you feel less blue, but there's an article in the Times today about Eddie Vedder et al at the Vote for Change concert. Sounds like he's still kicking it.

Thanks for the link. :) Eddie Vedder is so totally awesome. I would really hope that, if I am ever in a position of influence the way he is, I would use it the same way, to make the world a better place. There are so many lame, shallow ways to waste the power that comes with fame; I'm so proud of him for sticking up for what he believes in and trying to do what's right. [cue utter lame dorkiness] When I was a kid, I used to always wish that he was my father. He was certainly more influential, in a positive way, than my actual father ever was.

"I'll never love something so passionately and with such devotion again."

It goes in cycles.
I felt like that about Star Trek, and then BtVS came along.
I felt like it about T.Rex, Queen etc. then there was Sisters of Mercy, Bauhaus. I felt like that about them, and now I'm starting to find some new stuff I like, and some old stuff I missed first time round.

Don't despair - there'll always be someone to make you go "Wow!" even when you think you'll never say it again.

And hey, nostalgia ain't what it used to be, kid!

Yeah, there will be new things, always. There's new stuff that I like now: Common Rotation and the Cruxshadows come to mind. But they don't have anything approaching the power or meaning to me that the music of my teenage years had. It was all combined with growing up and developing an identity and loving something totally without reservation. I don't think I'll love anything without reservation or critical distance again. Which is probably a good thing, in the interest of being a sane rational grown-up. But sad in that that passion of youth is gone.

Sane rational grown-ups aren't all they're cracked up to be - as most election results prove!

I don't think I'll love anything without reservation or critical distance again.

You might. There were things I loved unreservedly in my teens and I thought, afterwards, that a miserable part of growing up would mean that nothing would never seem that shiny again. But then I went beserk about BtVS (and, more briefly, some other shows and books) in a way I never expected to.

(I was also going to go harrumph and say, "Just wait til you're 31, but I see HarmonyFB has already done that and trumped me by a decade to boot.)

This afternoon I suddenly thought of Eddie with "pro-choice" written on his arm. One of those images just sort of burned into my brain I suppose.
Probably my biggest freakout moment was a few month ago when I saw that Weezer had a 10th anniversary edition of their first album out (I can remember saving up change to buy that cd, damn it).
But yes, I always felt the music and just *stuff* from that moment was so important. It was that important for me. A kid out in the middle of no where Alabama hearing that there was something else? Someone like me or something? Yeah.
*sigh*

Probably my biggest freakout moment was a few month ago when I saw that Weezer had a 10th anniversary edition of their first album out

Yes! I keep freaking out about things like that.

Like today, I realized that Jerry Cantrell is 38 years old. 38! Jerry Cantrell is 38. But ... but ... but ... he's in his early 20's, and he's got that baby face, and just ... he can't be 38 now!!!!

Um, yeah. Things like that.

This afternoon I suddenly thought of Eddie with "pro-choice" written on his arm. One of those images just sort of burned into my brain I suppose.

I totally know what you mean. That was SUCH a great moment. Like also Eddie jumping into the crowd in the "Evenflow" video, or Layne writhing in the cage in the "Man in the Box" video, or Kurt glowing golden in Nirvana unplugged.... stuff that sticks in your head forever.

I always felt the music and just *stuff* from that moment was so important. It was that important for me.

It really was a fucking awesome moment in history. Looking back, I'm really glad I grew up with that stuff, even if I was too young to fully experience it. You don't see that kind of genuine, honest, powerful, passionate, REAL music reaching the masses anymore the way it did, for a moment, back then. It was special.

This is a hard one to work through, I say from experience...

The way you describe feeling about music in your early and mid-teens, I was that way from about 12 years old until about 23. It was just everything in the world to me, took me away from everything that I hated and gave me solace. The music I listened to was vastly different than what you got into, though - for me I wanted stuff to entertain me rather than make me think. I thought too much as it was. I just wanted stuff to make me smile and dance and have fun, I wasn't into music with messages. That was just the era, though...

Then it all fell apart for me when I was 23, and I never got it back. For a few years I really mourned it; I really missed the innocence of it all, the newness and the excitement. And I sometimes still do. But only sometimes now. Now I'm glad I'm older and I know what I know, have been through what I've been through.

Hopefully you'll get there at some point too. No problem looking back and missing something, but letting it hinder you from accepting that it's in the past and moving forward to something else could be a bit of a problem.

Which, by the way, I don't see happening to you. :oD

Thanks. :)

I see where you're coming from, and I guess I'm sort of at the same place. I wouldn't want to trade in the knowledge that I have now.

Part of it was working with a band, following them on tour, seeing them backstage, traveling with them sometimes, hanging out with them in real life. The mystique goes away really quickly, and you realize they're just flawed people like everyone else.

I'm glad I experienced that; IMO it's better to see the truth, flaws and all, than be blinded by idealized mythology. I'm just going through a phase of missing those more innocent days, I suppose.

I have this tendency to live in the past, and to brood on it endlessly.

One thing about me that I don't think people know is that I am repulsively sentimental about the past. Not in a reliving sense or wishing things were different, but exactly as you expressed. We moved so much that I always had a tendency to want to hang on to everything about the life I was leaving behind. Not only that, but I can still relate to the me that used to be. I remember how I thought at 6, at 10, 22--my timeline is very clearly demarcated in respect to age and where I was at the time but it almost folds over on itself, because I'm just me. This maudlin sentimentality extends to pasts that aren't even mine.

Like when I read about people, or see old photos or gravestones, I always study them; I think about those people, who they were, what their lives were like, what did they want, their families, how they got on, were they cookie-cutter citizens or modern, independant thinking women trapped in the frock and petticoat covered bodies of their times. And how they, as does most everyone, just disappear into the ether and this slab of stone is the only thing that tells us they were ever here. And that people who are related to them, probably don't even they existed--that there was this person on the planet who was and isn't. I'm not sure why I still like cemetaries despite the teeny bit of melancholy--except that I think I like feeling that way, it keeps me real.

One crap thing about getting older is that it's harder to completely fall into something. People don't understand that mentality and it never feels like the freedom exists to just dissolve into something as completely--and despite every intention of not conforming, I think we all do just a little bit. Maybe that's why it's never as raw and easy and real like the first time. Jaded, older, whatever, like you said.

It's also hard to feel like I'm living in stasis, which I sort of am. I keep being the same, for the most part, but time plods onward. Nobody I know has a life like mine. I've never shared interests with people for the most part, only sort of just shared space until I was bored or out of obligation or whatever. This past year has been so wild in finding people who enhance my life and have the specific strengths which will allow me to grow as an individual.

I look at people my age, people who are as much older than I as I am you, and it makes no sense to me--they make no sense to me. And I know I won't change. I haven't, I can't and I never will.

Just you watch. People like us get Alzheimer's, because then we just live there permanently.

...just thought I'd babble back at you to show that there are more pathetic and sad cases of dorkness which eclipse your own.

Dude, we are so similar.

I wonder if it has to do with moving around so much at a young age. If you count pre-school, I had been to eight different schools by the time I got to high school, not to mention moving from Indiana to Puerto Rico to New Jersey. My first diary entry is me at 9, having just moved to Puerto Rico, listing everything I missed about Indiana.

I can still relate to the me that used to be. I remember how I thought at 6, at 10, 22--my timeline is very clearly demarcated in respect to age and where I was at the time but it almost folds over on itself, because I'm just me.

Yep. Totally. My parents come to me now saying "Don't you see why we did [whatever stupid parental thing they thought they had to do]?" and I say no, I still take the position that I held back then. I still remember exactly how I thought and felt and why. Just because I was 10 doesn't mean I was stupid.

My memory of "me" as the same person I am now begins when I was seven or eight. The first time I saw Star Wars and the miserable year of third grade. I remember my life continuously after that as myself. (Before, I remember bits that feel like myself, but lots that feels like generic six year old Southern Indiana Catholic schoolgirl.)

I always study them; I think about those people, who they were, what their lives were like, what did they want, their families, how they got on, were they cookie-cutter citizens or modern, independant thinking women trapped in the frock and petticoat covered bodies of their times.

I totally do the same thing. I think about what life was like in the past, and how people felt, all the time. I'm always thinking about the amazing people who must have lived, who are now totally lost to history, and how everyone I love and admire will eventually end up the same way. Um, it's kind of depressing, actually. I think about a world where all the art I've loved is gone forever, but then, that world will have it's own amazing art that I'll never know about. Life's a cycle and all that.

I've never shared interests with people for the most part, only sort of just shared space until I was bored or out of obligation or whatever. This past year has been so wild in finding people who enhance my life and have the specific strengths which will allow me to grow as an individual.

Awesome. I was in that situation when I was younger, but when I found people who shared my musical interests as a teenager it made such a huge difference. It means so much to have people who share those powerful, meaningful experiences with you, people that you grow together with. I'm really glad we got to know each other this year!

And when you love something at that age, you lack the critical screen that you might have as an adult, so you REALLY love it, and you're so young it's like it gets imprinted in your brain, so you grow up loving it, like loving it becomes a part of you.

So very true.

Thanks for sharing. Miss your smile, Laura-- it was lovely meeting you in real life.

Miss you too--it was wonderful that we got to hang out for a bit. Hopefully again sometime in the future....

I've got a hell of a lot of years on you, and, believe me, something else will turn up that will excite you and that you will love just as much as the things you loved in the past.

I know that sounds incredibly trite, but it will.

Is AllaboutSpike gone for good?

I've got a hell of a lot of years on you, and, believe me, something else will turn up that will excite you and that you will love just as much as the things you loved in the past.

I don't really think so. I don't have that passionate idealism anymore. It's probably a good thing; I'm more discerning, more critical, less likely to invest fully in something that's going to disappoint me, etc. Wholehearted, uncritical devotion is dangerous; it's important to always keep your eyes open. Everything I've loved since I was a kid I've loved from a critical distance, a disconnect, not the same total passionate trust. I never totally adored Spike the way I totally adored, say, Pearl Jam, and given what ME did to the character I'd say that's a good thing.

I know that sounds incredibly trite, but it will.

I'm sure it depends on different personality types and such.

Is AllaboutSpike gone for good?

Well, the archive will remain as long as I'm alive and can afford to pay the server fees. I have no intention of ever taking it down. But it's been months since I added a new story; I'm barely keeping the works in progress up to date. So it's not what it used to be.

It's probably a good thing; I'm more discerning, more critical, less likely to invest fully in something that's going to disappoint me, etc.

It's probably a sign that you've grown up as much as anything, but I'm sure you still have many things to look forward to.

I know that musically, teenage years are ingrained within you forever. That being said, I was never about the music. It's always been about the TV for me.

I might have thought nothing could ever get to me again, but I didn't get addicted to Buffy (and Spike) until I was in my forties. We have different personalities, you and I, so that might not mean anything.

I hear Green Day's new album is very good (so say my daughter and my brother, from two different generations).

Alas, I never really liked Green Day. They were sort of after the music that felt like mine; more my little brother's music.

I don't think I ever liked TV quite the way I like music. TV is too corporate, I guess; you don't get the same purity of artistic expression you can get from a really good band. TV has to be tame enough to air, simple enough to attract new viewers and mass audiences, has to please network executives, is put together by tons of people with different agendas, etc. I have loved TV shows, but not at the same level, not with the kind of trust that I would give to a band that I respect.

I'm wandering through various journals of friends of friends and came across your post.

It sucks because I don't think I'll ever experience that again... I'll never love something so passionately and with such devotion again.

I'm not going to claim wisdom of years because I'm older than you (although I *am* older than you, and by quite alot, but in no way does that necessarily make me wise), but I'm betting you're wrong. I don't know you at all, of course, nor you me, but I guess the above quote struck a chord in me.

I have lived much of my life with a passion (some would say obsession :-) for one thing or another. The object of said obsessive tendencies has changed over time - sometimes it's been a band or type of music, sometimes a particular hobby or sport or academic interest, more lately it's been Jossverse fandom (which is how I wound up on LJ in the first place).

When I've been between passions/obsessions, I feel like what you said in the quote above. When I revisit past ones, I remember what it was like to be immersed in that and get pretty damn nostalgic and sad that those days will never be again. But playing with the memories is like letting pearls run through your fingers - they're still with you and you can take them out and admire the pretties whenever the mood strikes you.

And you never know what's coming next. Sometimes it feels like it's a long time in coming and the wait can make life seem terribly dull in the meantime, but eventually something will arrive. At least, that's been my experience.

Of course, I could be completely wrong, so do feel free to take this post from a complete stranger with as many grains of salt as you please.

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