Subject: Re: Schrafft's or Schnapps
From: Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Date: Thu Aug 24 2000 - 12:14:43 GMT
'... Nostalgia is a funny and evasive element of life ...'
You can say that again. I think it's a most extraordinary
emotion - understandable enough, as I say, for a period
one personally looks back on. But - really - what are we
to make of what Tim terms the faux variety? Is it just
a type of sentimentality? I don't think so. At times, it
takes on the immediacy of one of those mystical epiphanies
we've all heard about. Metempsychosis? (Just kidding,
folks.)
In my late adolescence I went through a period of intense
questioning of my parents about their 1920s flapper days;
& went through the same process with a fab American lady
who had known something of the expatriate life in Paris
of the same period.
In the end, I wound up feeling as familiar with all
the triggers & road signs of the time - as if I'd lived
them myself. Jolson had only to start singing Avalon
for the tears to start in my eyes.
I had thought this would all be quite foreign to the anti-
romantic, unillusioned young of today - until I recently
started treating a 24 year old chap who began telling me
of the piercing homesickness he felt for the 50s.
Any explanatory suggestions for an intrigued, elderly shrink?
Scottie B.
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