Nostalgia
Saturday, Nov. 15, 2003 at 3:31 a.m.


I've been thinking a lot about nostalgia lately, and acting on it even more. I've been downloading cartoons that I loved in my preteen and high school years and I can't even remember how or why it started.

I downloaded the theme song to Tiny Toon Adventures because I couldn't remember how it went. As soon as I put it on I remembered how embarrassed I'd get when the song came on and there I was, all of eleven or twelve, feeling far too old to be watching a children's cartoon and at the same time outed by the horns and cheese ball lines of the theme song. I downloaded the Tiny Toon music videos for "Particle Man" and "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)", which I still stand by. I downloaded the five-part opening to Gargoyles, slightly more mature fare with the added benefit of having several Star Trek: Next Generation veterans among the voice talent.

My favorite, though, is Harley Quinn from Batman: the Animated Series. I've downloaded all of her episodes that I've already seen a million times, and also the Harley episodes from Batman and Superman, Batman and Robin, Batman: The New Adventure, and Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker which were all past my time. I enjoy them now, but it is sort of sad that kids are watching cartoons where the violence is openly depicted, including the blood. I caught Batman Beyond a couple of times and was horrified to see villains dying on screen and an opening sequence obviously inspired by the credits of Se7en, with words like "apathy" flashing across the scene. Times have changed, apparently, since I was twelve. And I always considered myself to be pretty precocious as a kid.

Still, even as I've downloaded the songs I loved from the 1980s (We Didn't Start the Fire) and watched "We Love the 80s" when I visit friends with cable, there's been one kind of nostalgia that's been conspicuously absent. Let me start by saying that I just listened to Garbage's album Version 2.0, and that I like it. Me, the music snob who measures everything by the free-wheeling genius of Patti Smith.

I was friends with M for all of High School and after, up until about a year ago. Anyone who's still around from the first incarnation of this diary will remember her. She's my screwed-up counterpart; my partner in crime who didn't quite make it and now is struggling to build her self-esteem, herself, from the bottom up. I'm not sure how it's going because I don't really talk to her anymore, unable to forget the last few years of our completely one-sided and troubling friendship and all the frustration and sadness that went along with watching her spiral past the point of my ever being able to help her.

She was a big part of my life for a long time, but more than that friendship, I've lost a part of myself from that time. It's a person that I've purposely lost, that I've been glad to abandon and forget about in the interest of reaching "adulthood."

It occurs to me that my version of "adulthood" is to be distant, not to rely on someone else to the point that they can let me down or hurt me. To be an adult is to be independent to the point of total isolation.

That girl that I lost (that had Garbage as a favorite band, with Sleater-Kinney up there as well) was very sensitive. She was very upset, twisting in the wind, pulled from what seemed like every direction. I was paranoid in High School, then had to remind myself that it's not paranoia if the thing you're worrying about actually happens on a regular basis. I never kept track of how often insults were yelled at me from across the cafeteria or how often girls talked about me among themselves but purposefully loud enough for me to hear. It felt like it happened every couple of weeks (I was conservative in my estimates even then) but who really knows?

After High School I spent a semester at American University. My parents moved to Toronto right after graduation, and this was difficult because it felt like I was being forced into independence before I was ready for it through of the loss of my home. I loved Garbage, then, and when they came to my university I bought a ticket even though I had no one to go with. I got there about two hours early and sat by myself in silence on the sidewalk for two hours, even though it would have been easy to start a conversation with my line-mates if I had been brave enough. I was still trying to deal with my paranoia, my place in the social realm, and this was before I had come to the conclusion that "it's not just the clothes." I had started wearing black because I felt different than most people; I wasn't different because I wore black. I felt different than the average person (represented by my dorm-mates) and though I liked them just fine they weren't who I wanted to form friendships with. The people I love are the ones who can really teach me something; I just hadn't found them yet, and didn't think I would in Washington, D.C. among the future leaders of America.

Garbage was the first concert, and only, now that I think about it, that I was part of the mosh pit. There wasn't very much moshing because we were all smashed together so tightly we could barely move. Remembering this makes me smile even now! We were close for the opening band, Girls against Boys, but when Garbage came on there was a crush. It was fantastic, even with the woman in front of my who's waist-length hair got all over me and the fact that by the end of the show I was covered with sweat and most of it wasn't mine. I had such a sad and desperate look on my face when I made eye-contact with Shirley Manson during "The Trick is to Keep Breathing" that I was embarrassed later, but not while it was happening. I jumped and screamed with everyone around me when she dedicated "When I Grow Up" to "the monsters in the front." I was totally part of the crowd and the music and pushed enough forward that I forgot I was in the university gym. It was the best experience of that abortive semester and the entire, depressive year.

I left A.U. but didn't have a chance to pick up all my stuff until after the winter vacation when the dorms were reopened. Me and my mother drove down from Toronto in early January and I got a distinct feeling wandering around that dorm. It was like I was visiting someone else's life, only I knew where the bathrooms were. How could I be so intimately acquainted with someone else's life? Only, it wasn't someone else's life, it was mine, and I don't think I've ever really admitted that to myself. True, it was a while ago, five years, a long time for someone with as shitty of a longterm memory as I've got, but I have to remember American University because that truly was the beginning of my adulthood. I may have started by falling flat on my face for about a year, but it's important. Getting crushed at that Garbage concert taught me something, and I want to remember it. I've got my journals, and though I was hardly religious about writing in them I think it's time I took another look at them. And, I have Garbage's Version 2.0.

I want to know who I was, and there are only a couple of people that I can think of who can tell me.... Maybe it's time to give one a call? I never wanted to loose track of her completely and I've been thinking about her a lot lately. Maybe get a cup of coffee with M, as we did for years and years and years, always wishing we could come up with something better and only able to trade out the cafe. Borders Cafe, Java Hutt in Birmingham, where else? In the end it didn't really seem to matter.


I'm listening to Garbage -- Beautifulgarbage, Version 2.0
I'm reading Seven Gothic Tales by Isak Dinesen
I want to go back to AU and look around my life, and maybe even relive it a little

Previous:
- - Thursday, Oct. 27, 2005
back yet again - Thursday, Aug. 04, 2005
Batman - Friday, Jun. 17, 2005
Just fucking around today - Sunday, May. 22, 2005
pre-birthday - Saturday, Apr. 30, 2005