Why Do We Experience Nostalgia?
Channeling memories to spark creativity and well-being
Is nostalgia helpful to the creative process?
I’ve pondered this question ever since I was an art school teenager caught in an embellished swoop of memories — most of them not mine. Inevitably, these downloads from the universe became poetry.
To me, nostalgia feels paranormal in its power and reach. It’s like I’m a medium and nostalgia is my spirit guide banging on the seance table and screaming at me to: Pay attention! But I’m usually too busy debunking its source to figure out what the guide is trying to tell me.
I’m very much a verbal thinker, but when nostalgia consumes me, it conjures snapshots — perfectly realized, emotionally drenched pictures of places.
Unlike daydreams, these images are usually of random locations I have been: an apartment building I’ve passed on a street, a tiny restaurant beside a rural field. They’re always of a place, not a person, and nothing of great value or note may have happened to me in these spots. But, my state of mind is captured like a photographic negative of my emotional landscape, the boundaries blurry, a record of my inner world trapped in a state of longing.
