# Anyone else a nostalgic person?



## presto (Jun 17, 2011)

Forgetting the classical music I absolutely love the past, particularly the 1930’s -1960’s, I have a deep affection for it and in a way a sadness for the things from that period that have now passed.
My house is old and I’ve kept its originality, I collect old stuff, Bakelite, radios, watch old movies and love older buildings, strangely I'm not old enough to remember these things first time round but I'm fascinated by them.
I find all this so much more interesting, absorbing and soulful that most modern entertainments, everything has now got too big, commercial and impersonal. 
I'm quite down to earth and know it wasn’t all roses in the past but I do get an enormous amount of pleasure from my interests.
Anyone else feel the same way?


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## sospiro (Apr 3, 2010)

I grew up in the 1960's & it was a time for getting rid of the old & idea that 'new' was best & I was heavily influenced by this attitude.

Now though I think it's a shame that older things weren't preserved & that so many buildings were demolished. Travelling around Europe, I've seen how other countries have taken care of their heritage & wish we'd done the same in UK. 

The 1960's were great fun but I don't feel nostalgic for the time.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

I have an interest in the past, and very much enjoy reading about it, but I am always wary of being overly fond or nostalgic about it. We all very easily become complacent about just how wonderful the modern world is, despite many of its flaws. Our golden age is now, and it's unfortunate that people don't see it.


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## Taneyev (Jan 19, 2009)

Everyone older that 60 is a nostalgic person. I'll have 70 next month, and yes, I'm nostalgic. I longing for the music of the 40s. I'm terryfy for the new gadgets you've to change every 6 months, and the Big Brother who knows on you how many times you go to the bathroom. Life was simple and people was less corrupt and stupid in my youth.


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## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Recently I discovered several movies of the Russian film director Eldar Aleksandrovich Ryazanov. His best work is 'Irony of Fate', a TV movie lasting for almost three hours, dating from 1975 (repeated every year on Russian TV at New Years Eve). The setting of this film are the horrible concrete greyish suburbs from Moscow and Sankt Petersburg, but Eldar Ryazanov manages to let a magic romance come to life even in these only-more-of-the-same surroundings. Yes, one may even get nostalgia for such outright boring Soviet times like the 70s, because of the tenderness, humour & true love that are beaming here from the screen towards us. But it is the internet of 2012 that has opened up treasures like these from the past. So the golden age really is now, like Polednice maintains.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

I love all things Art Deco.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

I love the 1920's and 1930's, particulary the Art Déco style, the principles and aesthetics of it (the style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and jewelry, as well as the visual arts such as painting, graphic arts and film; At its best, art deco represented elegance, glamour, functionality and modernity. Art deco's linear symmetry was a distinct departure from the flowing asymmetrical organic curves of its predecessor style art nouveau; it embraced influences from many different styles of the early twentieth century, including neoclassical, constructivism, cubism, modernism and futurism and drew inspiration from ancient Egyptian and Aztec forms. Although many design movements have political or philosophical beginnings or intentions, art deco was purely decorative; I borrowed this from wiki  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Deco). I love the cars of that epoch. Also my two biggest heroes, Einstein and Ravel, lived in that period. Said that, I have 23 yo, so, I belong to this modern ultra-technological era of the XXI century, I don't have a problem with that. In fact, as a physicist, I think I'm deeply connected with this time. I also love modern art and modern architecture. Of course, I hate most of the popular trends of nowadays (TV, pop music, obsession with material things, obsession with artificial beauty, extreme mercantilism, mass media manipulation through propaganda, etc), they tend to convert people into a bunch of uncultured pieces of meat (but with money to spend in silly products!!). I like the advances of this epoch but I'm worried with the extreme _alienation_ which people of nowadays seems to have.

(In fact, my avatar picture is an original Art Déco poster of a train )


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## presto (Jun 17, 2011)

sospiro said:


> I grew up in the 1960's & it was a time for getting rid of the old & idea that 'new' was best & I was heavily influenced by this attitude.
> 
> Now though I think it's a shame that older things weren't preserved & that so many buildings were demolished. Travelling around Europe, I've seen how other countries have taken care of their heritage & wish we'd done the same in UK.


So true about older building, the demolishing really started big time in the 1960's and since then many fine building have gone to make way for very poor architecture.
Even now our local Victorian school, a beautiful building dating from 1897 hangs in the balance of being demolished. 
Most of the community love it and want it saved but the council and developers want to knock it down and redevelop the site.
If we keep doing this kind of thing all the character of our towns will just disappear and they'll all just look the same.


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## presto (Jun 17, 2011)

aleazk said:


> I love the 1920's and 1930's, particulary the Art Déco style, the principles and aesthetics of it (the style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and jewelry, as well as the visual arts such as painting, graphic arts and film; At its best, art deco represented elegance, glamour, functionality and modernity. Art deco's linear symmetry was a distinct departure from the flowing asymmetrical organic curves of its predecessor style art nouveau; it embraced influences from many different styles of the early twentieth century, including neoclassical, constructivism, cubism, modernism and futurism and drew inspiration from ancient Egyptian and Aztec forms. Although many design movements have political or philosophical beginnings or intentions, art deco was purely decorative; I borrowed this from wiki  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Deco). I love the cars of that epoch. Also my two biggest heroes, Einstein and Ravel, lived in that period. Said that, I have 23 yo, so, I belong to this modern ultra-technological era of the XXI century, I don't have a problem with that. In fact, as a physicist, I think I'm deeply connected with this time. I also love modern art and modern architecture. Of course, I hate most of the popular trends of nowadays (TV, pop music, obsession with material things, obsession with artificial beauty, extreme mercantilism, mass media manipulation through propaganda, etc), they tend to convert people into a bunch of uncultured pieces of meat (but with money to spend in silly products!!). I like the advances of this epoch but I'm worried with the extreme _alienation_ which people of nowadays seems to have.
> 
> (In fact, my avatar picture is an original Art Déco poster of a train )


Great post! Art Deco is my favorite period too, you'll like my house all fitted out with 1930's originals.


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## regressivetransphobe (May 16, 2011)

"Nostalgia is complacence," "focus on the moment," nonsense. At the end of the day, my mind likes to tend toward pleasant things, most of which make me nostalgic _and_ are connected to the person I am today. Time has a way of giving you an unusual but comfortable perspective of your own experiences. There's nothing wrong with that.

My nostalgia's got nothing to do with art deco, or any particular era, though...


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## lou (Sep 7, 2011)

I often enjoy reminiscing and take comfort from past memories.

However, I try to remain open to new things. It is very unattractive to me when someone laments constantly about how such and such, was so much better in the past. It is human nature to forget much of the bad and only remember the good. 

I do feel that we are inundated today with many things that are innocuous, or mediocre. But that is only because it is much easier for anyone to access the tools to create and reach an audience.


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## kv466 (May 18, 2011)

I always feel nostalgic for a time I never even lived in nor experienced...anything other than the 80's.


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## Guest (Mar 4, 2012)

I'm nostalgic about 2052.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

I agree with _Odnoposoff_, that geezers are most all subject to nostalgia fits (that isn't quite what he said, but close enough). Nostalgia seems to have more than one flavor though. My memories are about 50-50 good and bad. I had the habit of giving names to the beater cars I owned. Mostly they turned against me anyway.


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## GoneBaroque (Jun 16, 2011)

All of my cars have had names. I often think fondly of the days, the times and especially the friends which are gone. Were things better then? I don't know; there was good and there was bad, but more of good than bad I wager.


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## Miaou (Mar 1, 2012)

Thinking about myself being in the nostalgia of tomorrow and that of tomorrow's many tomorrows...


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## Guest (Mar 5, 2012)

[/QUOTE]


Hilltroll72 said:


> I agree with _Odnoposoff_, that geezers are most all subject to nostalgia fits (that isn't quite what he said, but close enough).


Hmmmm. My experience has been quite different. When I was fairly young, I was very nostalgic. On the cusp of 60? Um, not so much.

Reading history can do that to a person....

Nostalgia, generally, is a repudiation of wherever you happen to be at the moment. An escape from it. You hear "the past was a simpler time" a lot. Why, you've heard it already in this very thread as ever is. But think about it. What were "nostalgic" people saying about "the past" in the past that you're calling simple? Right. That the past, what is past to them, was a simpler time.

Hmmmm. Well all of us started out as little kids. Our needs were all met, for awhile, by someone else. We were fed and clothed. We were read to (if we were lucky). All the things we had were given to us by someone else. We had no mortgages or jobs or adult responsibilities. Of course that is easier and simpler! And easy, apparently, for the specific simplicity of one's own childhood to turn into a general simplicity of "the past." But the real past, for the adults in it, anyway, was anything but simple.

I suppose that as some people get older, they hanker more and more for the simplicity of their childhood. For the people who cared for them who are no longer alive. (For people in nursing homes, I'm sure that the nurses who care for them are no substitute for mommy and daddy!!) As I get older, I get more and more interested in what's going on right now.


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

some guy said:


> Hmmmm. Well all of us started out as little kids. Our needs were all met, for awhile, by someone else. We were fed and clothed. We were read to (if we were lucky). All the things we had were given to us by someone else. We had no mortgages or jobs or adult responsibilities. Of course that is easier and simpler! And easy, apparently, for the specific simplicity of one's own childhood to turn into a general simplicity of "the past." But the real past, for the adults in it, anyway, was anything but simple.
> 
> I suppose that as some people get older, they hanker more and more for the simplicity of their childhood. For the people who cared for them who are no longer alive. (For people in nursing homes, I'm sure that the nurses who care for them are no substitute for mommy and daddy!!) As I get older, I get more and more interested in what's going on right now.


An absurd analogy. I think you missed entirely what the OP was talking about.


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

As for me, I love some cars from only a few decades ago as much as I love modern equivalents.


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## Guest (Mar 5, 2012)

HarpsichordConcerto said:


> An absurd analogy. I think you missed entirely what the OP was talking about.


I know that you missed entirely that I was addressing a point raised by hilltroll and Odnoposoff. And then just went on to talk about nostalgia, generally.

Otherwise, do you know what an analogy is? Or are you just so eager to slam me personally at every opportunity that you don't even stop to think what you're saying?


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

HarpsichordConcerto said:


> An absurd analogy. I think you missed entirely what the OP was talking about.


I think you are right. Maybe _some guy_ needs another decade of mellowing.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

I do love the interactions between HC and some guy. They make me smile!


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Polednice said:


> I do love the interactions between HC and some guy. They make me smile!


Understood. Of course, you need _several_ decades of mellowing. You may, if you wish, take the analogy to fine wine.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

presto said:


> Great post! Art Deco is my favorite period too, you'll like my house all fitted out with 1930's originals.


This is the image on the desktop of my computer :









:tiphat:


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

I'm nostalgic about depression era thought, life, and folk, because of my dad and papa (porteguese for grandpa). Papa used to tell the same jokes all the time, etc. That sort of stuff sticks with you. Also, I'm very well educated when it comes to my family history. You could say I was born living in the past, e.g. Will Ferrell may be funny but I enjoy old okie and ***** humor better, I hate spending money, especially going out to eat, and I would rather fix up an old truck than go to the bay area. People today aren't so bad, but they're awful trite and uneducated in old world etiquette (my eyes roll to the back of my head when I see someone who doesn't know that you don't talk politics to just anyone anywhere).


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I have a good friend, born in '49, one year older than my parents, but unlike my parents he really got a lot out of the '50s and '60s (my parents were on the wrong side of the Civil Rights Movement and so on). He grew up on a farm in Canada, listening to the radio, got into rock 'n roll, the Beatles, and from that to all kinds of music. His knowledge of the popular music (and other pop-culture as well) of the '60s and '70s is amazing. 

Now he's so excited by the internet - repeatedly wondering aloud that his is the first generation able to relive its youth. He can't believe the DVDs he can get of old Dylan concerts, or behind-the-scenes footage of Chuck Berry and Mick Jagger, or westerns from the '50s. His enthusiasm is fun. 

But the thing is, the internet (if it survives in anything like the way we know it) will change something about life. The things of one's youth will only be more accessible. I remember my own excitement when I discovered that I can play Metroid online. Like being in 3rd grade again....


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

science said:


> I have a good friend, born in '49, one year older than my parents, but unlike my parents he really got a lot out of the '50s and '60s (my parents were on the wrong side of the Civil Rights Movement and so on). He grew up on a farm in Canada, listening to the radio, got into rock 'n roll, the Beatles, and from that to all kinds of music. His knowledge of the popular music (and other pop-culture as well) of the '60s and '70s is amazing.
> 
> Now he's so excited by the internet - repeatedly wondering aloud that his is the first generation able to relive its youth. He can't believe the DVDs he can get of old Dylan concerts, or behind-the-scenes footage of Chuck Berry and Mick Jagger, or westerns from the '50s. His enthusiasm is fun.
> 
> But the thing is, the internet (if it survives in anything like the way we know it) will change something about life. The things of one's youth will only be more accessible. I remember my own excitement when I discovered that I can play Metroid online. Like being in 3rd grade again....


You remind me of another way I and several others of us probably live in the past: we are nostalgic about the old atari and nintendo games. Most people I know would think of me more as a gardening enthusiast, a book reader, and a constant project tackler, than a gamer, but I really do love the vintage games. Fairly often, my brother and I will enjoy some Donkey Kong after we're just spent and we want to goof around for an evening.


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