Nostalgia

Memory is really the only thing we have. Everything becomes a memory. No wonder there’s constant allusions to it in artwork.

“Memory is a tough place. You were there. If this is not the truth, it is also not a lie. There are benefits to being without nostalgia. Certainly nostalgia and being without nostalgia relieve the past. Sitting here, there are no memories to remember, just the ball going back and forth. Shored up by this external net, the problem is not one of a lack of memories; the problem is simply a lack, a lack before, during, and after. The chin and your cheek fit into the palm of your hand. Feeling better? The ball isn’t being returned. Someone is approaching the umpire. Someone is upset now” (64).--Citizen

“Nostalgia--its delicate, but potent. Teddy told me that in Greek nostalgia literally means “the pain from an old wound.” It’s a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. This device [a slide projector] isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine. It goes backwards, and forwards… it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called The Wheel, it’s called The Carousel. It let’s us travel the way a child travels - around and around, and back home again, to a place where we know are loved.”--Mad Men

“Me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow”--Beloved

Claudia Rankine, Don Draper, Paul D, and Sethe all find themselves reflecting on the past and offer different interpretations of memory in these quotations.

Rankine reflects on something beyond memory. Sitting here, there are no memories to remember. She feels herself living inside of a feeling. Not something remembered, but an unconscious collective of recollections. Something that leaves her feeling empty. The ball isn’t being returned. She is unable to find solace in memory.

But Don Draper, in one of my favorite Mad Men scenes, longs to return to his memories. During his pitch for an ad campaign for Kodak’s slide projector, he has the machine filled with photos of his family. He longs to return to a simpler time, before he alienated his family through his infidelity and inattentiveness. Nostalgia is an escape for Don.

And in Beloved Sethe’s life is similarly consumed by the past, minus the longing to return. Her time at Sweet Home literally starts to haunt her. At the end of the novel, Paul D helps her understand that her past must be overcome, not dwelled on. She can’t find any comfort there, but she can reach a level of acceptance by focusing on the future.