This post reminded me of a meme that went something like "Liking music from the 90's is not a personality trait."
It seems to tie in well with "And of course people who have been trained from birth to deal with only the visual and the surface are going to adopt a distorted and ‘wrong’ version of the fashion labels, colour palettes and haircuts way before they burrow through the sediment to reach the morality and the mentality", which is an important sentiment that you've touched on in the past, and I'm certain you're going to delve into in the future - the lack of depth.
Not only depth of learning, but even depth of preferences. It's just adopting a label as identity, with no real meaning behind it. It's unfortunate really, but it's been something I've seen happening with my friends right in front of my eyes, and I think it's only reading articles like yours and books (Postman for example), that have even made me aware of this in the first place.
Most worryingly, I'm at the stage in my mid-20's where most of my close friends have moved into corporate jobs, talk about nothing but sports, video-games, Netflix and they're all playing golf.
In spite of what every internet guru has advised me to do, I still love them to death, and I'm still friends with them. The seeming impossibility of being able to remain friends with "normies" has always been weird to me, I mean you can always just say no when they ask you to play golf?
The world getting more basic aside, "All Nostalgia is Nostalgia for Past Optimism" is brilliant. like you pointed out, Gen Z is absolutely obsessed with the 90's but I feel like there's been a healthy dose of 80's nostalgia going around too, especially on twitter - synthwave, bodybuilding and nationalism. I would be lying if I didn't find the simplicity of it all appealing.
Loved the 3 steps at the end as well (gumroad course incoming?), embracing decentralization and betting on yourself has never been more important. It definitely feels like that DIY spirit is being embraced, and localism seems to be making a return as well. I think it was Taleb who first introduced me to that term, but I'm starting to see it pop up everywhere.
One good example is Brunello Cuccinelli, the founder of Cuccinelli a luxury men's fashion line. If you haven't heard of him I strongly recommend you to look him up. I imagine you'll find something of a kindred spirit in him. He's published his writings on his website, which has "Beauty is the symbol of the morally good"- I.Kant emblazoned on it's lander, and articles with titles such as "The Decline of Consumerism in Favour of the Fair Use of Things" and "My Idea of Humanistic Capitalism".
Anyway, loved the article as always Tom, they seem to be resonating strongly with people which is great to see.
Conor! Great to hear from you as always. This comment section was missing your weekly insight. (You and Sebastien provide as much depth and ideas as I do. More so some weeks to be honest).
Several points to touch on here: Cuccinelli has recently come on my radar via David Perell (who I’m happy to say is a subscriber and recently was kind enough to share my essay on The Death of Lunch) and yes his whole philosophy is great. This is the Soaring Twenties, Epicurean, value driven mindset that I hope continues to grow and grow over the coming years. I will be studying it closely.
Also, yes the death of preferences is a very weird phenomenon. There seems to be an increase of people incuriously accepting what algorithms give them with a shrug of their shoulders. ‘Whatever’, ‘It’ll do’ etc. I guess in a world of everything the appeal of any one particular thing diminishes. Why search for and cherish any one particular record when Spotify can give you any one of ten million of them? In this context/mindset everything becomes background filler rather than deeply immersive. And so over time the importance of literature/cinema/music itself diminishes even though it is consumed more than ever. It’s like lift weights more frequently and yet somehow deskilling and becoming weaker.
That being said I don’t understand or condone ‘normie hate’ either. Building yourself up by knocking down a projected ‘other’ is a losing strategy. The state of the average is a reflection of the dereliction of duty of the ‘elites’ whether it be the elites or power, culture, intellect or any other attribute. Educate and incentivise people to appreciate art and art will blossom. Teach people to be mere consumers and that’s what you will end up with.
As always talking to you has trigger ideas for half a dozen essays. Thanks again, Conor.
I had actually typed out a comment for this earlier in the week and then completely forgot to press post, hence the delay!
Perell is great, one of the many reasons I still have a twitter account.
I greatly appreciate the healthy does of optimism you bring to these posts, as well as the concept of the Soaring 20's, which I completely agree with. Despite the pandemic, in many ways were making more progress than ever, and opportunity has never been more available for those who want it. We need people like you to remind us of that.
"Educate and incentivise people to appreciate art and art will blossom. Teach people to be mere consumers and that’s what you will end up with."
Yes, absolutely spot on there, and I'm glad that individuals like Cuccinelli are having attention brought to them as all it takes is one positive role model like that to completely change a person's perspective on life.
Something I find myself realizing a lot these days is there are certain things I appreciate now that I absolutely did not appreciate earlier in life. Hiking for example, or going for a long walk, or even just the first cup of coffee in the morning.
But I learned how to appreciate these things, mostly from positive role models who taught me how. It's ineffective to tell a teenager to "be grateful", because they have to learn it for themselves, and in many cases they learn by example, from aspirational figures and role models.
I have you to thank for another few pages of notes, and I feel as though my conversations in day-to-day life have been improving from reading these articles, not to mention that I'm spending more time thinking and wasting less time being 'busy'.
Being ‘a positive role model who teaches people how to appreciate things’ is something I see as being one of my most important tasks.
‘Embrace the ordinary’ ‘The future is analogue’ ‘Soaring Twenties’ and all of these other phrases I build essays around are all about getting people to look forward to what’s in front of them, in both senses of the term.
The fact that this is resonating shows that people are becoming increasingly disenchanted with cynical narratives to the contrary.
Wisdom begins with wonder. Wonder begins by paying attention to the commonplace. Hence my emphasis on being a flaneur. Hence the name of this newsletter.
great mail, thomas. keep em coming. For the mail, specifically, knowing what quality "art" I was going to get, I went and prepped me a cup of green tea, priming, as if like a ritual.
Good times.
Im never nostalgic, or so I thought, but I always long for places, and people, especially.
Past is no place to live, indeed. This mail made me feel, more and give sensations and tid bits of images, rather than well formed thoughts.
It’s interesting to me how the circumstances that occur when writing change the nature of the piece. With this one I had a busy week and so I started writing it last minute. I got it done just in time for my deadline.
This situation made it have a more Impressionistic, sensation-producing energy which you detected. Rather than it being a tightly logical, well formed and revised piece.
Personally I like this feel and think it’s a good tool to have in the toolbox. Though the ticking clock can be stressful. I’ll keep mixing it up then- rapid drafts and carefully researched and revised pieces.
Oh boï, do I have some thoughts about that "nostalgia" thing !
First, let me confess that I have always been prone to nostalgia as a way not to go forward; there is a deadly comfort in reading old books, watching old films, and analyzing these epochs only from this artistic perspective, to be able to say "What has this world gone to ? My God, I would have been so much happier back then !" That childish and fear-driven idea usually disappears when you talk with people who actually lived during these times, and tell you all the dirty-kitchen stuff you conveniently brushed aside (talk to your grandad about these "golden times" when pneumonia often meant death, or to your parents about the cold war era). When you look back and remember the time spent with an old lover, you usually remember all the good stuff and not the day-to-day nagging and disputes that ended the relationship. I think it is the same with history. Nostalgia is often a way of reframing the past to better cope with it and - hopefully - building your roots to move forward.
Regarding the Gen Z approach to Nostalgia, I think they live in a world far more fractured and atomized than we did in the 90s. We're at the end of an era where everything is pushed to the extreme and the system can only go on as long as it pushes forward. The past 15 years developments of technology have created an atomised world where everyone is his own niche and every artistic trend is subdivided in tens of sub-genres. How can you find a common cultural ground in that? Kids need references, they need "roots" to build their own identity. And the modern world offers none, so it seems only logical that they go and find them in the past, in an era where creativity had more room to flourish and where the "market" had not yet took total control over it. So yeah, they're only taking the attributes and the symbols (like clothing and haircuts), but that's the mandatory first step before going further.
I would also say that we are in a refinement culture that kills the ingenuity and the fun out of every activity. You see it within the sports industry (btw who called sports an industry in the 80s?): everything is über-professionalized, there are so much new rules, regulations and technological sophistication that the only thing that matters is the .001 second you'll have over the oponent. Marketing and PR agencies have effectively weaponized the fun in every cultural activity and I feel that Gen Z teenagers/young adults are craving for a return to something more "humane", more candid. So some of them dive in nostalgia in search for it.
Hey Sebastien. Once again you have left the kind of great comment that makes me want to have a second crack at writing the original piece. Lots of great ideas to mull over here.
First, Refinement Culture is a huge point and as a concept I think it is one of Skallas’ major contributions. It ties in to what I wrote about previously with the scourge of metrics in the world. It’s no surprise that all sports have been ‘Moneyballed’ (Especially number heavy US sports) and that entertainment has followed in its wake. And there is surely a link between this an our pocket supercomputers as the two have seemingly grown in tandem.
Second, I don’t blame the Zoomers for there nostalgia. As you say it as a first step. I would be the same way if I were in there shoes. And I too have felt the pull of the kind of Rose tinted, survivorship bias riddled nostalgia you referenced above. I guess you could say that I wanted this piece to be a bridge between the first step of nostalgia and aesthetic development and the second step of orienting towards the future and actually getting in the arena.
Third, you use of the words ‘humane’ ‘rootedness’ and the idea that fun has been weaponised are all vital. The last point could (and probably will) be a newsletter in and of itself. I think all of this marks the transition from one era to the next- something that few of us have experienced as we have lived through this long era of stasis. So why pine for a golden age of yore when a new one is just beginning?
I think that this is one of your best newsletters yet. You can certainly see nostalgia for the past playing a part in people being disappointed by their idols. It's very common with fans of bands, such as Smiths fans bemoaning Morrissey's current political views. At times it feels as if there's a requirement for the individuals you admired in your youth to continually act as a kind of beacon throughout the later years of your lifespan. I'm probably just waffling nonsense, though.
Anyway, I hope that you keep writing these. I look forward to them every Sunday. Cheers.
The nostalgia expectation puts the artist in an impossible bind- either follow your vision and have your art change as you change resulting in disappointing a good portion of your original fan base or stay the same and end up either stagnating or descending into self-parody.
Some such as Bowie created the expectation of being changelings which gave them the scope to evolve every few years. There is wisdom in this. Some fans might dip out during certain phases but they can always come back to the fold when the next, more agreeable, phase begins.
How to implement this is, of course, an ongoing question. But it’s certainly something for us all to think about.
I’m glad you enjoyed this weeks issue. I hope we continue to go from strength to strength in terms of insight and craftsmanship as well as just metrics. Writing more for the benefit of Zoomers is a vein worth mining IMO.
Anyway. Thanks again for your input and insight here and I hope I’ll be hearing from you again next time Sutpen.
"The nostalgia expectation puts the artist in an impossible bind"
That's true and that's terrible, because you cannot write in another time than the one you live in. You may love Hemingway or Flaubert, but it's not just the stuff you will write about that will be different; every era has its own identity, references, way of thinking, vocabulary and so on... To put it simply: you could not think like Flaubert even if you spent years living like him and reading what he read, because an author and the time period he lived in are intrically connected. That's why every comparison with past artists is a dangerous trap
Nothing much I can add to your comment other than to say: ‘precisely’
People allow influences to influence them in toxic ways. I think we should take little technical skills from different people, little tricks and approaches, rather than deify people and (our romantic perception) of their era.
We need to see that now is the best time to be alive that there has ever been. And this is always true because there is no alternative to now.
That’s my pleasure Jason and thank you for both reading and taking the time to comment.
One of my aims is to be one of these lighthouses for young artists. This is why I am trying to broadcast a tone of optimism here. Because I feel it and believe it and because you don’t hear much of it in the current zeitgeist that is still stuck in the old paradigm of celebrity and narcissism that you mention.
Don’t get me wrong. The near-term will be tough. I’m not downplaying that. People are struggling. But I’m talking about the new day that will dawn once we are beyond that.
Hopefully I’ll be seeing you around these parts again soon.
Very good observations, Alicia. One aspect of the 90’s (and the decades either side) is how absolutely media saturated they were. I wonder if the end of existence, life-flashing-before-their-eyes moment of the Millennial will consist of a mental montage of clips from cartoons and sitcoms. Will my final moment be to the tune of Friends or Batman: The Animated Series?
The overattachment to childhood point you make is huge. That is what I was trying to get at. Letting go of (over) nostalgic sentiments is a developmental stage in a sense. A rite of passage. Becoming a man means letting go of childish things as St Paul told us.
And the media, you could say, are interested in keeping us as perpetual adolescents because this demographic spend without thought of the long term. Or am I being too cynical?
Yeah, there’s an interesting paradox wherein rebellious gestures against a supposes establishment is the true conformity. Actual going against the grain rebellion today takes the form of decorum and restraint and civility and so forth. I feel so old saying that but it’s nonetheless and observable fact.
On the topic of Man United and the 90’s I want to first tip my hat to Eric Cantona and him leaving football at the height of his powers because he felt like it.
King Eric is part of this newsletters official Sprezzatura Hall of Fame.
Nostalgia hunting, as you say can be a motivator. But it can turn you into a carbon copy of your idol. Your idol transcended their own idols. That’s how it works. Mimesis is a trap in the end. As are metrics, which of course we have discussed before.
This was really great. I love your writing style.
Another great article on nostalgia you might enjoy (if you haven't read it already!) :
https://aeon.co/essays/nostalgia-doesnt-need-real-memories-an-imagined-past-works-as-well
This post reminded me of a meme that went something like "Liking music from the 90's is not a personality trait."
It seems to tie in well with "And of course people who have been trained from birth to deal with only the visual and the surface are going to adopt a distorted and ‘wrong’ version of the fashion labels, colour palettes and haircuts way before they burrow through the sediment to reach the morality and the mentality", which is an important sentiment that you've touched on in the past, and I'm certain you're going to delve into in the future - the lack of depth.
Not only depth of learning, but even depth of preferences. It's just adopting a label as identity, with no real meaning behind it. It's unfortunate really, but it's been something I've seen happening with my friends right in front of my eyes, and I think it's only reading articles like yours and books (Postman for example), that have even made me aware of this in the first place.
Most worryingly, I'm at the stage in my mid-20's where most of my close friends have moved into corporate jobs, talk about nothing but sports, video-games, Netflix and they're all playing golf.
In spite of what every internet guru has advised me to do, I still love them to death, and I'm still friends with them. The seeming impossibility of being able to remain friends with "normies" has always been weird to me, I mean you can always just say no when they ask you to play golf?
The world getting more basic aside, "All Nostalgia is Nostalgia for Past Optimism" is brilliant. like you pointed out, Gen Z is absolutely obsessed with the 90's but I feel like there's been a healthy dose of 80's nostalgia going around too, especially on twitter - synthwave, bodybuilding and nationalism. I would be lying if I didn't find the simplicity of it all appealing.
Loved the 3 steps at the end as well (gumroad course incoming?), embracing decentralization and betting on yourself has never been more important. It definitely feels like that DIY spirit is being embraced, and localism seems to be making a return as well. I think it was Taleb who first introduced me to that term, but I'm starting to see it pop up everywhere.
One good example is Brunello Cuccinelli, the founder of Cuccinelli a luxury men's fashion line. If you haven't heard of him I strongly recommend you to look him up. I imagine you'll find something of a kindred spirit in him. He's published his writings on his website, which has "Beauty is the symbol of the morally good"- I.Kant emblazoned on it's lander, and articles with titles such as "The Decline of Consumerism in Favour of the Fair Use of Things" and "My Idea of Humanistic Capitalism".
Anyway, loved the article as always Tom, they seem to be resonating strongly with people which is great to see.
Conor! Great to hear from you as always. This comment section was missing your weekly insight. (You and Sebastien provide as much depth and ideas as I do. More so some weeks to be honest).
Several points to touch on here: Cuccinelli has recently come on my radar via David Perell (who I’m happy to say is a subscriber and recently was kind enough to share my essay on The Death of Lunch) and yes his whole philosophy is great. This is the Soaring Twenties, Epicurean, value driven mindset that I hope continues to grow and grow over the coming years. I will be studying it closely.
Also, yes the death of preferences is a very weird phenomenon. There seems to be an increase of people incuriously accepting what algorithms give them with a shrug of their shoulders. ‘Whatever’, ‘It’ll do’ etc. I guess in a world of everything the appeal of any one particular thing diminishes. Why search for and cherish any one particular record when Spotify can give you any one of ten million of them? In this context/mindset everything becomes background filler rather than deeply immersive. And so over time the importance of literature/cinema/music itself diminishes even though it is consumed more than ever. It’s like lift weights more frequently and yet somehow deskilling and becoming weaker.
That being said I don’t understand or condone ‘normie hate’ either. Building yourself up by knocking down a projected ‘other’ is a losing strategy. The state of the average is a reflection of the dereliction of duty of the ‘elites’ whether it be the elites or power, culture, intellect or any other attribute. Educate and incentivise people to appreciate art and art will blossom. Teach people to be mere consumers and that’s what you will end up with.
As always talking to you has trigger ideas for half a dozen essays. Thanks again, Conor.
Tom.
I had actually typed out a comment for this earlier in the week and then completely forgot to press post, hence the delay!
Perell is great, one of the many reasons I still have a twitter account.
I greatly appreciate the healthy does of optimism you bring to these posts, as well as the concept of the Soaring 20's, which I completely agree with. Despite the pandemic, in many ways were making more progress than ever, and opportunity has never been more available for those who want it. We need people like you to remind us of that.
"Educate and incentivise people to appreciate art and art will blossom. Teach people to be mere consumers and that’s what you will end up with."
Yes, absolutely spot on there, and I'm glad that individuals like Cuccinelli are having attention brought to them as all it takes is one positive role model like that to completely change a person's perspective on life.
Something I find myself realizing a lot these days is there are certain things I appreciate now that I absolutely did not appreciate earlier in life. Hiking for example, or going for a long walk, or even just the first cup of coffee in the morning.
But I learned how to appreciate these things, mostly from positive role models who taught me how. It's ineffective to tell a teenager to "be grateful", because they have to learn it for themselves, and in many cases they learn by example, from aspirational figures and role models.
I have you to thank for another few pages of notes, and I feel as though my conversations in day-to-day life have been improving from reading these articles, not to mention that I'm spending more time thinking and wasting less time being 'busy'.
Looking forward to the next one, cheers Tom.
Being ‘a positive role model who teaches people how to appreciate things’ is something I see as being one of my most important tasks.
‘Embrace the ordinary’ ‘The future is analogue’ ‘Soaring Twenties’ and all of these other phrases I build essays around are all about getting people to look forward to what’s in front of them, in both senses of the term.
The fact that this is resonating shows that people are becoming increasingly disenchanted with cynical narratives to the contrary.
Wisdom begins with wonder. Wonder begins by paying attention to the commonplace. Hence my emphasis on being a flaneur. Hence the name of this newsletter.
Tom.
When you put it like that, it all fits together. You're doing a wonderful job thus far Tom.
Thanks. Shout it from the rooftops! Tell all your friends and family!
Cheers, Conor.
great mail, thomas. keep em coming. For the mail, specifically, knowing what quality "art" I was going to get, I went and prepped me a cup of green tea, priming, as if like a ritual.
Good times.
Im never nostalgic, or so I thought, but I always long for places, and people, especially.
Past is no place to live, indeed. This mail made me feel, more and give sensations and tid bits of images, rather than well formed thoughts.
Until the next mail.
—Fury
Thanks for taking the time to drop by Fury.
It’s interesting to me how the circumstances that occur when writing change the nature of the piece. With this one I had a busy week and so I started writing it last minute. I got it done just in time for my deadline.
This situation made it have a more Impressionistic, sensation-producing energy which you detected. Rather than it being a tightly logical, well formed and revised piece.
Personally I like this feel and think it’s a good tool to have in the toolbox. Though the ticking clock can be stressful. I’ll keep mixing it up then- rapid drafts and carefully researched and revised pieces.
In appreciate this quality feedback, Fury.
Until next weekend.
Tom.
Oh boï, do I have some thoughts about that "nostalgia" thing !
First, let me confess that I have always been prone to nostalgia as a way not to go forward; there is a deadly comfort in reading old books, watching old films, and analyzing these epochs only from this artistic perspective, to be able to say "What has this world gone to ? My God, I would have been so much happier back then !" That childish and fear-driven idea usually disappears when you talk with people who actually lived during these times, and tell you all the dirty-kitchen stuff you conveniently brushed aside (talk to your grandad about these "golden times" when pneumonia often meant death, or to your parents about the cold war era). When you look back and remember the time spent with an old lover, you usually remember all the good stuff and not the day-to-day nagging and disputes that ended the relationship. I think it is the same with history. Nostalgia is often a way of reframing the past to better cope with it and - hopefully - building your roots to move forward.
Regarding the Gen Z approach to Nostalgia, I think they live in a world far more fractured and atomized than we did in the 90s. We're at the end of an era where everything is pushed to the extreme and the system can only go on as long as it pushes forward. The past 15 years developments of technology have created an atomised world where everyone is his own niche and every artistic trend is subdivided in tens of sub-genres. How can you find a common cultural ground in that? Kids need references, they need "roots" to build their own identity. And the modern world offers none, so it seems only logical that they go and find them in the past, in an era where creativity had more room to flourish and where the "market" had not yet took total control over it. So yeah, they're only taking the attributes and the symbols (like clothing and haircuts), but that's the mandatory first step before going further.
I would also say that we are in a refinement culture that kills the ingenuity and the fun out of every activity. You see it within the sports industry (btw who called sports an industry in the 80s?): everything is über-professionalized, there are so much new rules, regulations and technological sophistication that the only thing that matters is the .001 second you'll have over the oponent. Marketing and PR agencies have effectively weaponized the fun in every cultural activity and I feel that Gen Z teenagers/young adults are craving for a return to something more "humane", more candid. So some of them dive in nostalgia in search for it.
Hey Sebastien. Once again you have left the kind of great comment that makes me want to have a second crack at writing the original piece. Lots of great ideas to mull over here.
First, Refinement Culture is a huge point and as a concept I think it is one of Skallas’ major contributions. It ties in to what I wrote about previously with the scourge of metrics in the world. It’s no surprise that all sports have been ‘Moneyballed’ (Especially number heavy US sports) and that entertainment has followed in its wake. And there is surely a link between this an our pocket supercomputers as the two have seemingly grown in tandem.
Second, I don’t blame the Zoomers for there nostalgia. As you say it as a first step. I would be the same way if I were in there shoes. And I too have felt the pull of the kind of Rose tinted, survivorship bias riddled nostalgia you referenced above. I guess you could say that I wanted this piece to be a bridge between the first step of nostalgia and aesthetic development and the second step of orienting towards the future and actually getting in the arena.
Third, you use of the words ‘humane’ ‘rootedness’ and the idea that fun has been weaponised are all vital. The last point could (and probably will) be a newsletter in and of itself. I think all of this marks the transition from one era to the next- something that few of us have experienced as we have lived through this long era of stasis. So why pine for a golden age of yore when a new one is just beginning?
See you next issue, Sebastien.
Tom.
I think that this is one of your best newsletters yet. You can certainly see nostalgia for the past playing a part in people being disappointed by their idols. It's very common with fans of bands, such as Smiths fans bemoaning Morrissey's current political views. At times it feels as if there's a requirement for the individuals you admired in your youth to continually act as a kind of beacon throughout the later years of your lifespan. I'm probably just waffling nonsense, though.
Anyway, I hope that you keep writing these. I look forward to them every Sunday. Cheers.
Thanks Sutpen.
The nostalgia expectation puts the artist in an impossible bind- either follow your vision and have your art change as you change resulting in disappointing a good portion of your original fan base or stay the same and end up either stagnating or descending into self-parody.
Some such as Bowie created the expectation of being changelings which gave them the scope to evolve every few years. There is wisdom in this. Some fans might dip out during certain phases but they can always come back to the fold when the next, more agreeable, phase begins.
How to implement this is, of course, an ongoing question. But it’s certainly something for us all to think about.
I’m glad you enjoyed this weeks issue. I hope we continue to go from strength to strength in terms of insight and craftsmanship as well as just metrics. Writing more for the benefit of Zoomers is a vein worth mining IMO.
Anyway. Thanks again for your input and insight here and I hope I’ll be hearing from you again next time Sutpen.
Tom.
"The nostalgia expectation puts the artist in an impossible bind"
That's true and that's terrible, because you cannot write in another time than the one you live in. You may love Hemingway or Flaubert, but it's not just the stuff you will write about that will be different; every era has its own identity, references, way of thinking, vocabulary and so on... To put it simply: you could not think like Flaubert even if you spent years living like him and reading what he read, because an author and the time period he lived in are intrically connected. That's why every comparison with past artists is a dangerous trap
Hello again Sebastien.
Nothing much I can add to your comment other than to say: ‘precisely’
People allow influences to influence them in toxic ways. I think we should take little technical skills from different people, little tricks and approaches, rather than deify people and (our romantic perception) of their era.
We need to see that now is the best time to be alive that there has ever been. And this is always true because there is no alternative to now.
Time machine thinking is mind poison.
Tom.
That’s my pleasure Jason and thank you for both reading and taking the time to comment.
One of my aims is to be one of these lighthouses for young artists. This is why I am trying to broadcast a tone of optimism here. Because I feel it and believe it and because you don’t hear much of it in the current zeitgeist that is still stuck in the old paradigm of celebrity and narcissism that you mention.
Don’t get me wrong. The near-term will be tough. I’m not downplaying that. People are struggling. But I’m talking about the new day that will dawn once we are beyond that.
Hopefully I’ll be seeing you around these parts again soon.
Tom.
Very good observations, Alicia. One aspect of the 90’s (and the decades either side) is how absolutely media saturated they were. I wonder if the end of existence, life-flashing-before-their-eyes moment of the Millennial will consist of a mental montage of clips from cartoons and sitcoms. Will my final moment be to the tune of Friends or Batman: The Animated Series?
The overattachment to childhood point you make is huge. That is what I was trying to get at. Letting go of (over) nostalgic sentiments is a developmental stage in a sense. A rite of passage. Becoming a man means letting go of childish things as St Paul told us.
And the media, you could say, are interested in keeping us as perpetual adolescents because this demographic spend without thought of the long term. Or am I being too cynical?
Thanks again for stopping by, Alicia.
Tom.
Yeah, there’s an interesting paradox wherein rebellious gestures against a supposes establishment is the true conformity. Actual going against the grain rebellion today takes the form of decorum and restraint and civility and so forth. I feel so old saying that but it’s nonetheless and observable fact.
On the topic of Man United and the 90’s I want to first tip my hat to Eric Cantona and him leaving football at the height of his powers because he felt like it.
King Eric is part of this newsletters official Sprezzatura Hall of Fame.
Nostalgia hunting, as you say can be a motivator. But it can turn you into a carbon copy of your idol. Your idol transcended their own idols. That’s how it works. Mimesis is a trap in the end. As are metrics, which of course we have discussed before.
Thanks Axel.
Tom.