Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Metanostalgia.

I listened to "Nightswimming" by REM for the first time in years last night. It was kind of funny, because the song was deliberately written to provoke feelings of nostalgia when it came out, lo those many years ago, and I dutifully listened to it quite a few times in various reverie-provoking, memory-laden places back then.

Last night it provoked feelings of nostalgia for those times I listened to it with a sense of nostalgia all those years ago. Would this be metanostalgia?
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6 comments:

Jeff the Baptist said...

At some point does it just become non-stalgia?

9:08 AM, July 28, 2009
Retardo said...

Jeez, that really takes me back... Haven't thought about metanostalgia in years!

9:56 AM, July 28, 2009
NotClauswitz said...

I can't find anything nostalgic about it - it's fake whimsy and pseudo-oldie to my ears, and kind of bad.

11:18 AM, July 28, 2009
Tam said...

Hey, now, for better or worse, they're my hometown boys. The older brother of one of my high school friends was buddies with them in their garage band days. :o

12:20 PM, July 28, 2009
staghounds said...

Sometimes that piece just reduces me to tears, it's lovely.

Isn't it wonderful that there is so much art, we can all find something to move us?

Maybe that's the ultimate human hope, and the final argument against tyranny. What central planner, or hundred thousand central planners, could reproduce Youtube, or dream up Postsecret, or let Van Gogh have a paint set?

7:29 PM, July 28, 2009
Steve Skubinna said...

Careful, when nostalgia becomes self refential you can get a Star Trek type recursive loop. I'm pretty sure you'd have to get Geordi to reverse the polarity, or maybe discharge a plasma flux from the sensor array.

Careful, when nostalgia be-

Careful, when nostal- shit! Captain, we have a problem!

7:15 AM, July 29, 2009

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