The Death of Nostalgia

Bart Schaneman

I see them everywhere I go. Faces from my past. Old lovers. Parents of dead friends. An enemy who never got the satisfaction he sought. Acquaintances of acquaintances who only put up with me because they had to.

The only thing we ever had in common was being from here.

I’ve been going through my old CD book, driving these hometown streets with the music of my young adult life. It’s a time capsule written by my younger self. I stopped buying physical albums about 10 years ago, so Devendra Banhart’s in there, along with Wolf Parade and Okkervil River. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists. Bands on Saddle Creek Records. Mid-level indie groups, most didn’t make it. Listening to them now is like time-traveling back to Mistakeville, the Land of Regrets and Poor Decisions, and Memory Lane is a dark alley where thugs with sticks and whips lurk in the shadows, waiting to attack. Much of it evokes memories of people I no longer have in my life. People I no longer am.

I’ve tried to put it all behind me. Nostalgia only rots with the passage of time. I can work to remember the good times, fond moments, but often evoking those feels like a distortion, a culling of only the best stock when the real story is the whole herd.

Our memories are lies we tell ourselves in order to go on living.