On Nostalgia

Because it is comforting, because it is essential, because it is inevitable, nostalgia will always be an easy way in.

Nostalgia is always just as comforting, because it is always drawing us back to ourselves. Nostalgia is the selfie of subject matter

As often as not, creating something revolutionarily new simply means finding a different set of reference points than the ones used by whatever is currently dominant

Floating in space, nostalgia tries to ground itself where avant-gardism tries to fly

nostalgia assumes its full meaning’: the underlying implication is that if we were awash in some sense of the authentic, we would not have much occasion to look backward to find it – let alone yearn for a return

a moment so obvious I did not take note of it; it just seeped its way into me and has never bled out

Anyone who has ever tried to argue that they don’t have regrets – or that you shouldn’t have them, either – is effectively endorsing the same basic conception of identity, even if they’re trying to downplay the bad instead of emphasizing the good;

the physical world is very much like the metaphorical tree, spreading and branching from a solid core that grows and strengthens with the overall breadth. We do need to be careful of taking this way of thinking too far.

Nostalgia has some plainly essential functions to our identity, even if we only conceive of it as a restorative, but as the lady says, the difference between medicine and poison is dosage.

This usage of nostalgia is rarely very specific: it can suggest that the target is anything from a sentimental patsy too easily seduced by saccharine stories or things that prop up their own ego, to someone who is generally naive or misunderstands history, to the kind of rock-ribbed reactionary who won’t rest until every pair of pants comes with suspender buttons by default.