The Art of Nostalgia

So yesterday after a long but really great fourth of July I passed out, and I do mean passed out. I'm talking ready to walk out the door to another cook out fully dressed and then waking up like what in the world just happened. And of course after all that I could not for the life of me get back to sleep and so what do I do when I can't sleep? I contemplate the vas-ness of the universe. And on this particular night, after thinking about the movie MIDNIGHT IN PARIS(I recommend that you see it, but it is a movie more for the grown up in you not the kid.) and I just couldn't help but start to think about NOSTALGIA.

I mean in the movie Owen Wilson's character is nostalgic about living in a time other than the present, that time being the 1920's in Paris. And for good reason I mean F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Picasso, Gertrude Stein wow, what a time to be alive right? Well maybe not for you but if I had the chance to be around that bunch I really have no words.

So then I began to think about what time am I nostalgic for? And as I thought about it Randall Pink came to mind because it definitely would not be high school(if these are the best days of my life, remind me to kill myself.) but the more I thought about it the harder it really was for me. And that kind of upset me. Because I know in my heart that I would love to live in so many eras.

I mean besides my current situation, which I happen to think pretty much sucks there just isn't anything that interests me about this era that we are living in outside of my friends and family. I almost have this feeling that we might be living in the Forgotten Age. I mean there seems to be nothing great coming out of this portion of our history and nobody really even cares about it. I mean really to the best of my knowledge the thing that will be best known from this Era is social networking, and I don't really think that is the best thing.

What happened to us? I mean really what happened, we put a man on the moon for god's sake? Why is it that nobody cares that we aren't doing anything more meaningful in this "golden age" we seem to be living in. 50 or 60 years ago this country struggle so terribly with civil rights and people stood up and did something about it, and now we live in a time to see the first black president, but it really doesn't mean that much to people, at least it doesn't feel like it.

I mean I could totally be off base but I don't think that I am. I heard the other day that the NASA program is about to implode because of the state of the economy. And in the moment I just felt depressed. We have become a nation or a people that only cares about money. And it seems like we only want money just so we can have it. We don't want it to have power or influence, to affect change. We just want it so that we can have things, and more things than the guy that lives down the street.

What are we going to leave behind. Social networks, the twilight and harry potter series, and Michael Bay films. I'm not saying that any of these are just the worse things in the world, but where as one Era of people brought us the great pyramids, or the works of Shakespeare, or even people landing on the moon. These are the things we have?

I am Nostalgic for a place in history where things matter and people really cared about the mark they were going to live on this world. That it wasn't even to just make a lot of money, it was more important to be true to yourself, it was more important to be extraordinary. When is that time going to happen again?