Appreciate Everything Endlessly.
But beware a silent menace works underneath and against us: Nostalgia.
Manufactured in 1990 by the Eastman Kodak Company, the Stretch 35 was a disposable camera loaded with 12 exposures of 200 ISO Kodacolor Gold film.
I photographed Strands a short time after that on a clear summer afternoon. I imagined panoramas would be the best way to capture a moment in this place & time.
And while Dana Point may legally lay claim to this beach, Salt Creek, Monarch Bay, Monarch Terrace, Monarch Beach, Emerald Ridge and Niguel Shores, it will always be Laguna Niguel to me.
To get to this bluff I crawled through that hole in the gate at the southern edge of the parking lot many times, even after they greased it, patched it, and fenced it off, it was ripped open again. It's gone now. I miss it.
"Under the paving-stones, the beach!" -- graffiti, Paris, May 1968
He realized that much of his torment of the years past had been self-inflicted, and an inevitable part of growing up. And, most important of all for one who had taken so long to grow up, he thought he had learned not to be the slave of his emotions.”
― Thomas Wolfe, You Can't Go Home Again
You may find yourself an idea obsessive.1 You may find yourself behind the creation and curation of a taxonomy of the world only you see. You may find yourself hurt by the hydraulic press of evil and injustice out there: racism, prejudice, abuse. And you may ask yourself, "Well, how did I get here?"
This is the Curse of the Empath: not just to hear, but to listen; not to look but to see; not simply to know but to feel. And you may find yourself unable to fully control any of these behaviors.
Sworn to Fun, Master of None
So you embrace joy in others.
You love to appreciate a turn of phrase, the melody of speech, the singer and the song, the mathematical wheel within a wheel of how the natural world works, a certain evolution of mythology old and new, told in the arts & humanities, a dirty joke, a balanced cocktail, a tailored shirt, a buy-it-for-life of a safety razor, the smell of the sea spray on a humid summer day in Pedro, and God? Let’s just say one undeniable fact about human spirituality is what Douglas Coupland called “the twinkle inside the meat.”
So you may find yourself The Collector. You were born when counterculture became consumer culture and so you buy, and all your objects all come with inner lives, with stories they tell beyond their carbon-based existence: that book you had the author sign, that hundred year old typewriter that was your Grandfather’s, that Donald Duck you’re fairly certain was made by Charlotte Clark. They all have life. Or do they? What was it Joan said about “We tell ourselves stories in order to live...”?
So you know a little bit about a lot of things, but more to the point — how you feel about them is what matters. And as time goes by the cycles of the new turning to old lead to the old turning up defunct or worse… historical buildings demolished, community events abandoned, ocean fronts fenced off for houses worth the cost of a new attraction at Disneyland, it can feel like if you can’t master change you’re doomed to worship the past.
It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice—there are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia. When you compute the length of time between The Event and The Nostalgia For The Event, the span seems to be about a year less in each cycle. Eventually within the next quarter of a century, the nostalgia cycles will be so close together that people will not be able to take a step without being nostalgic for the one they just took. At that point, everything stops. Death by Nostalgia.
― Frank Zappa, The Real Frank Zappa Book
At best, we can appreciate the past (we’ll get to “appropriate” in a future episode) — at worst we care only to live in that glorious imagined version of the past we create for ourselves (Re: Joan.) What Fictitious Advertising Creative and Blue Collar Gatsby tells us in perhaps the greatest three-and-a-half minutes of post-modern television is, “nostalgia” is the pain from an old wound.
And yet: you may find yourself feeling that pain as you age, those Springsteen Glory Days twanging inside your belly. You tell your friends “I stopped listening to new music once my kids were born” but in reality, you’d rather listen to what you loved in high school more than anything else. Sirius XM will tell you everything you need to know about what Corporate expects of your listening habits.
But yet you love what you love. You look in the mirror and you’re Huell Howser, you’re Jonathon Gold, you are Unreasonable Hospitality, you’re Charles Phoenix — and your best bet is to do the one thing you know how to do in the present to stiff-arm your nemesis, Nostalgia.
To appreciate everything endlessly.
Next time on A.E.E.: “The Algorithm”
I am a documentary editor. I like Tiki bars. I also use pictures to express myself.
You are not the kind of person to use the second person “you” in a place like this but here you are, Bright Lights, Big City.