On Memory or Nostalgia

Let me preface this entire post with the following disclaimer: I am in the business of the past; a doctorate in history being the ultimate (in its ordering usage) consequence of a series of poor life choices that result from an unchecked affection for the past.

Over the past ten days I have posted more than a score of old photographs to Facebook, although my intent had been to scan only two.  The batch spanned about a decade from 8th Grade through the year or two past college.  I expected a few comments from close friends, but I wanted them up for me more than anything else.  However, they have touched a chord with friends (some of whom I haven't seen save for social media in nearly twenty-five years) and the comments and "likes" have brought me an immense joy and a deep sense of how camaraderie transcends time (as it should).  I have been lifted up in mind and soul by everyone's else evident joy in the images and the fond memories they bring to mind.

One comment has stuck with me, and I have been considering its meaning for several days now.  The picture in question (for those who are interested) depicts my high school marching band providing live music for a Halloween parade at one of the elementary schools in my home time.  It is not posed, and shows most of the band from that year, many, many dear friends.  On seeing it, a good friend wrote, "I want to crawl inside this photo and live there for a few weeks."  I basked for a while in the happiness of that thought as indeed music and the music program in general was the gravitational rotating mass of my high school years.  Ask me to talk about classes, and I'll struggle to come up with anything save less pleasant memories, but ask me about band and I'll drown you in the torrent of my stories. But he captured my sentiments perfectly (he is in the book editing business so he knows how to turn a phrase) because nostalgia is joyful and a place of solace from the cares of today. 

That comment lead to a series of comments questioning (all good-natured) the difference between memory and nostalgia.  And there is a difference, indeed.  History while never recorded perfectly, and often shading out the worst bits at least stands up to reasoned scrutiny.  Nostalgia obscures or even re-writes the bad and lifts up the good and paints the past as better than today.  In our own lives we tend to engage in the most rank declension-ism.  A fascination with the separation between nostalgia and history (a divide quite apparent to me even as a young fellow) led me to my life's work.  I seek the history of the past in my own work and look askance at both memory and nostalgia as falling outside of the realm of the "provable."  However, I am not against nostalgia in all its forms (although "historical" re-enactment can take me to some dark places in the mind).  In fact, as an archivist (another skill-set) I recognize that what we save is often a reflection not of preserving memory but of nostalgia (think Kafka asking Max Brod to burn his letters after his death in order to help craft his posthumous literary memory). 

Composed (indoors with an outside temp of 101.5 'F) to the compositions and performances of J. Shogren on his 2008 album "American Holly."