Nostalgia Is a Constant Chase, as Are All Addictions

In episode [616] of The Sopranos, Tony describes his gambling vices in the following way – Well, you start chasin' it... And every time you get your hands around it, you fall further backwards... And at some point in my multiple viewings of that brilliant show, I happened to interiorize that description, that feeling, this idea that an addiction, almost more than the sensory pleasure itself, is actually all about the chase. In a way, it's not about what we gain from it, not really, it's about chasing that feeling. And in doing so, we realize the addiction becomes a reward in and of itself. Indeed, addictions seem to get us to a point where we don't particularly enjoy the coveted thing itself, we instead enjoy pretty much everything else about it, that is to say, the addiction isn't or isn't merely the object of our desire, the addiction becomes the whole ritual we built around that golden calf. I suppose the pleasure can be nice, but it's at times ironically secondary to the chase. And though I have no great love for gambling, I've taken Tony Soprano's words to heart, and realized the exact same feeling comes to me regarding two very special and interlinked occasions – dreams and nostalgia.

I've mentioned this many times before at this point, but I'll say it again now – I've made nostalgia a central theme in my writing. There could be many reasons for that, though I'm not, at this present time, prepared to illuminate any of them. That is simply not what I set out to do when I began to write this very paragraph. What I've set out to do with these words is different, though I'm not quite sure what it is. I think that could be because, by its very nature, even describing nostalgia is also a constant chase, and though I try, I never come close. But I also never stop trying.

Tony and the gang chasing gold

That attempt is an old idiosyncrasy of mine. For instance, when I was a kid I played a whole lot of video games, and from time to time I'd feel the urge to return to a specific game and relive some of those same old memories of it, to recapture whatever it was that made those games, and therefore those days of my life, so damn special to me. But whenever I'd try, I'd fail. It just wouldn't click, it didn't make any sense, the magic was simply gone and there was no way I'd ever recover it. I was trying to recapture lighting in a bottle, almost aware of how impossible it was but still desperately wanting it. So eventually I'd give up on it and move on, taking my attempt as a naive loss, as a hopelessly failed chase. But then, interestingly enough, a year or so would pass and that same failed chase would then have become a successful one. Those feelings of nostalgia that I chased, that urge to relive good memories, it all failed so completely because the moments can never be fully recaptured, but because they are now different times, new moments are created instead. And a few years down the line, those new now old moments become good memories. So like with all addictions, as with all chases, nostalgia is circular because you're never really there when it happens. And to quote Andrew Bernard of all people – I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them...

Indeed, it's a complete paradox. We are doomed, if that isn't too grandiose a term, to never truly experience memories in the moment because, well, memories, by definition, don't happen in the moment. You can, or you can try, to live in the moment, whatever the hell that means, but as soon as you wonder if that precise moment will stay in your memory, you're already gone from it. So with all vanities aside, I do often ponder about what does living in the moment really mean. Does that mean all thoughts of past and future are expelled from you? Does that mean you experience an entire blissful afternoon with no thoughts of anything at all that isn't conducive to an immediate sensory experience? I should be remiss to think so because our sense of time is our hands. We can't avoid experiencing life except through time. Before, during and after are concepts that contain a more than linguistic weight, they are inherent to our reality, or at the very least, to our perception of reality. I'm rambling on a bit now but I think my point is that there's simply no carpe diem, there's no truly living in the moment. To think in present terms forces us to think of past and future, at least that's how I see this whole thing. And yet, at times I almost see something else, at times remembrance almost makes me feel like I really am living in the moment, but I find that moment has suddenly become the past. I could try to describe that feeling in so many different ways, but to be honest, it's probably best described as a high.

There have been many a time when I very suddenly remembered something, not so much a memory, more of a vague detail, a sensation, and then something in my mind leads me to believe that the memory is, not only true, but something actual as well, as in something that is happening right now... Or if not that, it's at least happening concurrently with everything else. It's as if the rest of my day will be exactly like the rest of the day from which that memory was born. That is why, at least to me, time in literature is often best understood as circular, as a spiral, because things can be best described in a kind of non-linear fashion whereby certain events don't become meaningful until they are resurfaced by memory. And all of this is just my long-winded way of describing I'm not quite sure what... I was just reminded to write about this subject precisely because my last three posts on this blog were about video games I used to play all throughout my life, or during certain key moments in my life, but whenever I replayed them in recent years, I found myself sorta bored with them because I kept trying to reawaken a memory that is long gone. I will never return to those lost years and it's oh so foolish to try. For that reason, to replay those games becomes fairly pointless, but it's something I can't get out of my head after it enters it, so I play them but I grow bored again after a little while. The gods can never grant me that same initial feeling, I can never enjoy that experience as if for the very first time. However, and funnily enough, a year or so down the line, I can look back on that failed attempt and remember it almost fondly and as something pertaining to its own new kind of new experience. Because this whole thing, it's all a chase.

Still, how do I go from here to the addiction talk? How do I prove, if I even want or care to, that this chase for lost time is an addiction? Maybe I don't, I just suppose to me it is. I've been nostalgic since before I had much life to feel nostalgia for. This feeling has always accompanied me, and thus I try to commit it to writing because, as one frenchman once discovered, art is quite possibly the only way to truly relive memory. And in desperately wanting it, I almost want nothing else. I want to capture every one of my precious moments by whatever means available. And being unable to draw or paint, being unable to sing or write songs, I instead have to write books and essays, I meander on and on until I have exorcised whatever it was that bugged me, whatever it was that prevented me both from going on that chase and from abandoning it... Because the chase is never done, it's never completed, we never reach its ending. It goes on and on, so much so that, much like with gambling, the wisest choice might be to not play at all. On that note I almost envy people to whom nostalgia means nothing, people who, to once again quote Tony Soprano, consider “remember when” to be the lowest form of conversation... Not to put words into their mouths but it could well be that they consider time to be a waste of time. If so, then I almost envy them because at times I want the same for me, I almost want to be constantly looking ahead, either expectantly or disinterestedly waiting for the future.

But alas, that ain't me, it never really was. I've always been one to almost mistake memories for dreams, sort of in the same manner as when we wake up from a good dream and we immediately lay our heads on the pillow in an irrational attempt to return to the dream as if it's a real place we can freely visit... Likewise do we also remember, and when that feeling hits, that warmth I can't describe but I'm sure you know what I mean, when it hits it feels the exact same way... The memory is reborn with a kind of unreal reality, and to remember it is to feel it right there, just as it was on the very same day we lived it.

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