generation ?

You'd think the hipsters started it all: Bell-bottoms, Jackie-O frames, red lips, Elvis-inspired blues, rockabilly a la The Everly Brothers. The retro resurgence has pervaded every medium and compartmentalized today’s consumer behavior. It is impossible to turn a corner without being bombarded with some kind of nostalgic reference in the form of a vintage re-creation in the form of an overpriced commercial product.

Some things are rightfully never forgotten, but it seems that everything “retro”, the good, the bad, and the painfully misguided, has been reincarnated by a generation of culturally lost consumers. While it is the role of the self-proclaimed cosmopolitan tastemaker to obsess over the latest obscurity, what has compelled the trickle down effect to morph into a colossal cascade that has invaded the plebian periphery? 

At the start of 2000, the world’s artistic momentum reached a plateau in lieu of the Y2K prediction, and we were left with nothing but the inspired cultural innovations of the past fifty years to gaze back on longingly. The world lost track of the future and found itself at a standstill. And the only way to move forward was to sell nostalgia. We have yet to cover any ground since then, our popular culture but relics from the idealized decades we struggle to reconstruct.  The only sorry excuse we have for anything that slightly resembles a popular culture is “electronic,” or dare I say, “rave.” But again, been there, done that. 70’s Krautrock or 90’s Acid House anyone? Sure, we’ve arguably built on past movements and no doubt has reinvention always existed and been a legitimate art form, but nothing of the past decade has persisted to be more than a transient fad.

An optimistic rationale of this is that our right brains have been sitting idle for so long that, out of convenience and laziness, we have become hesitant to seek out new inspiration. A grimmer prospect is that we have digressed as a society and lost the ability to summon a thought-provoking, progressive aesthetic. 

The Millenials lack an identity. The avant-garde has run dry and surely, the current media landscape has not been conducive to counterculture. The days of anti-establishment, free love, and ‘bricolage’ are long gone and the faint ring of subversion is only left sounding in their parents’ teenage memories. It has been long enough to safely say “popular culture has drowned itself in the past” without sounding insensitive. Today’s society is steeped in an ideology that is unconscious. We lack a collective energy because we have become complacent and unquestioning. I love/hate to reference Radiohead, but could the eerie prophecy of OK Computer be coming true? 

What are your thoughts? 

x

social bookmarking soulmate

Today I was introduced to the social bookmarking site Diigo, a digital tool that allows users to annotate, store, and share information via web pages. I have reservations about the value of this tool, but I see that a potentially practical use might be that it allows searching for and finding other users with similar interests. Case in point, I noticed that I bookmarked many of the same pages that user Lysa Fish had, so following that lead I sifted through her library of links and found many interesting articles that are relevant to my points of study. For example, I found a paper entitled "Constitution of Culture through Consumerism and the Illusion of Individualism," which discusses the empirical observations of contemporary culture and economics as a product of self-interested agendas. I also came across "Retro Resurgence with Old, Unique Technology," which details the increasing demand for nostalgic commodities. She has built a rather extensive library, with over 100,000 links and a few added daily. Not only does she solely select articles that are well-researched and trustworthy, but she goes the extra mile to tag and attach a short caption to each find and neatly organizes all her tags. Her collection mainly focuses on culture, media, vintage, and the history that runs through these themes, and I hope, in following Lysa, I will find many more relevant and interesting articles that I can share with my readers. Until next time...

fellow nostalgiahead

Yet another blog caught my eye the other day, and I couldn’t refrain from sharing the delightful find with you, my dear readers. Nostalgic Rambler is the brainchild of author Hans “Jeff” Borger. Bringing to you the “nostalgic ramblings and musings on Pop Americana of the 1940s to 1960s,” he tackles a bevy of topics, most of which are, truthfully, unfamiliar to me. I scanned the post titles for one that would be most pertinent to my blog and happened on this one. I’ll leave it up to you to read the post, ‘cause what I’d like to talk about is the ubiquitous voice in this blog.

Jeff leaves a lot of room for the audience to form an opinion about him. On one hand, the breadth and depth of his knowledge makes him an authority on the culture of these eras. Jeff is eloquent, but not in a pedantic or overly academic way. He employs a concise and easy to follow sentence structure and refrains from excessive use of punctuation. He’s educated, but doesn’t try to wave it in his readers’ face, demonstrating that he’s comfortable with his level of knowledge. He spares his readers from the pseudo-intellectual tone too commonly found in the blogging world.

His voice is characterized by disillusionment, his tone bemused.  So what’s the cause of this? Well, for starters, he feels that these bygone eras were better times to live in. His idea of a Golden Era is crippling him and his life in the present day, maybe even alienating those around him: “I live in the past. My time warp is a comfortable cocoon even if it sometimes drives my wife crazy.” Jeff lives vicariously through the subjects of his blog posts, and his nostalgia may be a coping mechanism for living in a time in which he doesn’t feel he belongs or fits in. At the same time, he is the voice of an older generation, his suspicions of the younger generations’ amusements apparent in his sporadic, somewhat condescending undertone: “I don’t think we have too many national wits around anymore. The general population is probably too lowbrow to understand the comments.”

He’s nostalgic for a time when everyone gathered around the radio set for Benny Goodman’s orchestra in the same way that kids today are nostalgic for when Joy Division and Echo and the Bunnymen graced television sets over MTV’s airwaves. Reedimingly, he tempers his overflowing nostalgia with a healthy serving of self-criticism. He didn’t actually live to witness half of the things he talks about and he openly admits to that in his introduction:  

The music of the 1940s and 50s, the stars of those days were big stuff in their day, but are now almost forgotten. Oddly enough, I was born in ’64 so those iconic years were for the most part over by that time.

Jeff comes across with an almost father-like tone. It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly why this is so, but he evokes that anecdotal feel present in any story beginning with “When I was kid…” Imagine him saying this at the dinner table: 

Today in 2011 the 1940s seem like ancient history. Subtract thirty years from today and you get 1981…that doesn’t sound like THAT long ago, does it? As Jack Benny would have said…"Hmmmmmmmm."

 Jeff is softspoken, subtle, and ultimately endearing.

This blog is Jeff’s outlet to wax nostalgic and talk about the things he doesn’t think anyone in his life can appreciate: “The comments presented…probably won’t be of interest to the masses…anymore. If grandma and grandpa and their friends were still alive, then it would be a different story.” And thus the name Nostalgic Rambler: It might be rambling to everyone else, but to him it’s gold.

in retrospect

In preparation of moving forward with my blog and bringing you, my dear readers, the crème de la crème of my wits, I decided to conduct some research for a sample of blogs similar to mine, which I can refer to for insight and inspiration if I ever find myself running low on either. 

Amongst the blur of blogs tagged with keywords like “retro,” “nostalgia industry,” and “vinyl comeback”, the cleverly titled Retro Active Critiques caught my attention. Laden with photographs and video clips of old school acts and classic films, it looked promising. I quickly dived into the first post, “Invigorating Effect of a Relentless Beat” (again, quite favorably named for my purposes), which speaks articulately about the author’s connection to music with repetitive guitar riffs or Motorik sounds common in 80’s productions. She illustrates the magnetism of driving pulse-like rhythms by linking us to video clips of New Order’s “Temptation” and Don Henley’s “Boys of Summer,” to name a few. But she takes the blog from mere fansite to a study in the meta-context by also considering the reasoning behind her affection for this sound. She tags Oliver Sack’s Musicophilia, bringing focus to the “neurological elements at play in the very personalized ways we hear and respond to music.”

I didn’t have to read any further than this post to conclude that the blog belongs to an introspective (retrospective?) aficionado of retro culture. And indeed, Klara Tavakoli is both an admirer and regenerator of past cultural phenomenon. Klara is an amateur blogger who is in it simply for the fun, as I gathered from the low popularity of the blog (an Alexa rank in the twenty-seven-millions) and frequency of her posts (she averaged around one post per week in the past year, topping out at three times a week in her most ambitious month in 2009). But she sparked my interest because she proves to be more perceptive than the everyday blogger. She understands the deeper meaning behind retro presence in contemporary culture as evidenced by her blog’s description: “Because current is obsolete – And modern is yesterday, or tomorrow.” Retro Active Critiques is by no means a scholarly or professional source, but merely a nostalgic eye toward the past that exists to share what it sees with an audience that boasts the same passion. While she does incorporate some academic sources, she maintains a conversational tone, bringing her closer to her audience. I aim for a similar relationship with my audience. For example, in one of my favorite posts of hers titled “Retrospective: How Technology Tore the Roof of My Cozy 1960’s Fort,” she carefully describes the circumstance under which she became acquainted with the 1960’s as an escape from her own reality. She effectively appeals to pathos when she writes,

“The time I dedicated to individuals found through movies, books and films could have been spent instead on cultivating actual friendships…Fortunately, I had a like-minded boyfriend for a good part of my early 20's and didn't have to be completely alone in my odd and potentially lonely fantasy.”

Although I highlighted two of her stronger posts, some of the other ones are somewhat lacking and really only skim the surface of the topic. I strive to be as thorough as possible, examining each facet of my posts with adequate detail. Also, whereas Klara doesn’t favor any particular medium, focusing on all things vintage, I will narrow my concentration to music. I will discuss music’s play on nostalgia and the prevailing retro industry in a credible manner while still retaining interest and readership by using an anecdotal and easy to follow style similar to Klara’s. 

“Retro Active Critiques” is an antiquarian shrine to cultural memory, and it has definitely won a new follower.

here we go...

I’m coasting down PCH with my head resting against the window and my eyes focused on everything, but nothing in particular. Though I lost my concept of time somewhere in the four months I spent abroad in London, I know it’s around 5:30 p.m. because the sun has just about melted into the sea, probably stirring Japanese schoolchildren to wake on the other side of the Pacific. I’m nearly submerged in a daydream in which I’m discussing the elusive white truffle with Anthony Bourdain when the faintly familiar tune pouring from the speakers pulls me out of my daze. Predictably (if you know me well), I’m now on edge, but I quickly jot down the thoughts that have flooded my mind. No need to be alarmed, I don’t condone drafting and driving; I just forgot to mention that my best friend’s at the wheel. That’s the beauty of best friendships, innit? That you can sit in total silence for long stretches of time on a short drive to nowhere without the pressing need to fill the void with routine conversation. Anyway, the point is that this song caused a cascade of memories to rush back to me, and while neither the song nor the memory that it triggered is relevant today, the connection between music and memory is. Cue the blog.

If there were one thing I could change about myself it would be my proclivity toward short-lived, dramatic sentimentality. I hold on to things of the past with deranged insistence, but only for a short while – a month or so – and then they disperse into the hiding places of my mind. But music has been a remedy of sorts to this. It’s been an outlet to relieve the initial onset of nostalgia, and a capsule that keeps the memories safe until it’s time to revisit them again. Maybe this is relevant to you, maybe not. In either case we might not have much common. I’m a bright eyed and bushy tailed twenty-one-year-old college student, a self-proclaimed music snob, and a hardcore movie buff. In a month I’ll embark on an endless journey to make my mark in advertising, but for now, I’m enjoying my final days in college by making as many interminable memories and impressions that hopefully won’t be interminable to my psyche and/or face. If we are anything alike, it’s probably that we both find joy, solace, and melancholy in memories. And if there’s any reason for you to continue reading, even if it means enduring a few rants about songs I never want to hear again, it’s that you’re lost in the mystery of sound and musing, too, and want to measure your sanity against mine.

While the link between music and memory isn't a new concept and has been discussed in a variety of contexts, my promise is to shed light on this phenomenon through a different lens: a collection of my stories and my friends'.

Although I am an active participant in our manufactured culture (yes, contrary to what you Lana Del Rey haters may think, ALL of it is contrived), I consciously distance myself in order to analyze what’s going on and write about it. My self-awareness defines me. I’m fascinated by our generation, which seemingly has no identity, but borrows that of every past generation since the 20’s. I will ruminate on this through a discussion about the quickly burgeoning nostalgia industry, which is based on the capitalization of  nostalgia-inducing goods, selling memories of idealized times. On second thought, this may be considered another ode to the niche of blogs that have arisen in the category of observation, a craft that I admire. However you'd like it, there is much to look forward to in the upcoming weeks. For now, I'll leave you with this: