An Ode to Nostalgia

A lot of my life is spent documenting. Documenting moments, memories, places, feelings. It’s an attempt to immortalise the mortal, I guess. I’ve always done this. Keeping a box of “childhood treasures” and journaling and taking photos; it’s all an effort to remember my life as it flies on without my permission. Because who are we without our memories?

Art is such a powerful tool in this. Music, fashion, literature and art create the zeitgeist of an era, but they also create personality. They make us who we are, in every stage of our lives. Without these aspects of human culture, I think it would be harder for us (or me, at least) to accept the passage of time. 

Nostalgia often gets a bad wrap. Being sentimental is seen as unproductive, but I beg to differ. Windows into the past help us to grow up. Barbie movies and Teen Wolf and red skinny jeans no longer hit the way they used to, but they show me who I used to be, and I still love her. It is a beautiful privilege to be able to look back on a lifetime of photos and almost a decade of diaries and hear stories from friends and songs from family and to remember the past. It helps me appreciate it.

So I’ll always be nostalgic. I’ll miss every age I have ever been and every house I’ve lived in and I’ll document and document and document every meaningful thing in my life. I look forward to reading about my highschool crush when i’m seventy and my 20-something-year-old struggles at 85. It’s comforting, really, to look back and know that the little girl in the photos has survived. Changed, sure, but still survived. 

xx Rose