by Chris McGinty
I can remember some things about myself from about a year ago. The details don’t matter. What matters is that I’m basically the same person; and yet, if that me and the current me were to write down the ten things that were the most important the basics would be the same, but the details would be mostly different. This isn’t some amazing realization. I’m listening to an album right now that I’ve been revisiting for the last few months, but hadn’t listened to for well over a decade. Yet when I first bought it, it was the album I listened to the most. I view this album through different eyes now. I remember some of the people who mattered to me at the time (“She was 1970”), but now I make different connections.
Let me tell you kids, as you get older there will be a bunch of people who want to tell you that your point of view only exists because of your age. You’re not adapting to new thinking. You just don’t understand the art that is focused on today’s youth. This may be true about you when you get to my age (or even the age I would have been by now under different circumstances). It may also not be true. They’ll still accuse you of it anyway. You can be as open to new experiences and new thinking and new art all you want, but the moment you say you don’t want to do something or don’t agree with something or don’t find something entertaining; well, that’s because you’re getting old, my friend.
I listened to almost no modern music last year. I heard a lot of music I’d never heard before, but I didn’t listen to a whole lot of stuff from say 2021 to 2023. I reinforced my enjoyment of stuff from my past listening. I never really got nostalgic though. I created new memories with these pieces of music. I don’t mean that I was like, “I’m going to dive into the ocean off this cliff while listening to a-ha so that I nothing I think of ‘Hunting High and Low’ is going to be the same again.” (a-ha humour) I just mean that I was living my modern life while listening to music I was familiar with and now I have new associations. What I didn’t do was dwell on the past.
Nostalgia can be a trap. It’s not a trap that I step in often. I’m mostly a forward thinker. When I sound like myself from 20 years ago, it’s usually about something I always wanted to do, but haven’t had the chance to do (or prove) yet. That’s not really nostalgia, or we wouldn’t have bucket lists.
Chris McGinty is a blogger who is fully aware that the modern year is 1993. No getting trapped in past decades for this blogger. I’m a modern man and I do the best, well, that I can. I take on blogs, take blogs on. I do have one question though. Why do I feel like blogs didn’t really exist in 1993? Chris McGinty is an anachronism.