Nostalgia is Something for all Ages
Check out Rule Nostalgia by Hannah Rose Woods
When I was a kid many of my elders would often talk about the good old days. There was even a programme of that name that enacted the delights of the Victorian music hall, and made my toes curl. There was a general message amongst the older generation that we were all going to hell in a handcart, and they would cast their misty eyes back to an indistinct past, usually based somewhere in the halcyon days of their youth.
Despite having some insight into such retro visions in older age, I too find myself now railing against the perils of modernity and ‘it wasn’t like that in our day.’ Take for instance the notion we are becoming a nation riddled by attention deficits unable to read a book for five minutes without becoming distracted by the pinging of our smart phone, luring us back to the latest offering from social media. Listening to long concept albums, from start to finish, is a thing of the past when Spotify privilege playlists that scatter across a variety of bands and genres, without spending too much time on any one. And then there’s death of our high streets as we stay longer and longer done winding avenues of virtual reality. There are often kernels of truth that are cherry-picked, and maybe inflated, to become an overarching critique of all that is wrong today, compared to…
