Nostalgia is a malady of modernity as things recorded are able to be re-consumed over and over again ad nauseam. Yet, this appears to satisfy a wide swath of humanity who finds comfort in the familiar. To a new generation that lives in the immediacy of information at their fingertips, the novelty of the new is in constant flow and is ready to be tapped at their convenience. From this massive intellectual migration out of history to a form of homelessness as identified by not having a place people can return to, the deterritorialization of our species is evolving due to this separation of our social, cultural, and political practices. We are the epitome of the precariat, as we exist without predictability or security. Our collective identities are waking up to the bizarre reality that citizenship, culture, and customs are arbitrary fixations that serve the economy more than they serve the heart and soul of an individual.

It feels as if nostalgia draws me into the confinement of not getting out of my own past and so I need to practice letting go of those strings that hold me to that past. Recently, we were supposed to travel to Los Angeles, California, to see the band Nitzer Ebb, who we’d last seen perform back in 1991. Instead of incurring even more costs, we decided at the last minute to eat the price of the tickets and take a pass on digging into what was amazing to us some 30 years ago.

A couple of nights ago, it happened again after we arrived at a small venue in Phoenix where we were supposed to take in the Legendary Pink Dots. We walked in while the first act was performing but decided to head out to the patio instead. The second act was a solo artist who helped usher us back down the road before the headliner ever took the stage. The worst part of the night was watching the audience and getting confronted with scenesters and the ubiquitous black uniform that is de rigor for alternative culture. There is no novelty left in warmed-up memories that are better left fading in the background.

So, how about those old books I still own? Are they reminders of places I’ve been, or could I possibly ever read them again? We have DVDs gathering dust on shelves because, at one time, they were favorites that we felt changed our outlook or perception of aesthetics. Over the last twenty-odd years, I’ve not been able to bring myself to watch one of them; as a matter of fact, I recoil at the idea of listening to dialogs that never seem very far from my memories. As I’ve shared with many a person, Gilligan’s Island is never far from my mind’s eyes and ears and now I curse that show I watched so often back in the early 1970s.

I’m disconnected from my own generation, my parent’s generation, and, for the most part from the Millennials too. I’ve always abhorred conformity and ritual where growth is not the intended consequence of the endeavor. As a whole, we are boring people with isolated instances of genius, creativity, inspiration, and purpose. We function on the margin where our humanity is sacrificed for the benefit of the few, and then we gawk at the spectacle of those who crack under the immense pressure of divorcing greater purpose for the convenience of existence.

To paraphrase William S. Burroughs, changes can only be brought about by altering the original. Copies are part of a virus that repeats itself word for word, thought for thought. I desire to be more than a copy of who I was at 20, 30, 40, 50, or 60. The original must be torn asunder and reassembled, taking elements and cutting them up with the alien, strange, and unfamiliar. We must crush our tendency to find the nostalgia in who we were just yesterday and embrace a strong evolution to find what is new in tomorrow.