R + J
Smell has always been the most powerful agent of nostalgia. One whiff of a perfume long since smelled, or a dish long since forgotten can impel to the forefront of the mind the most vivid recollections. I had thought this method of unwarranted recall unsurmountable in its effectiveness, but I have begun to doubt this assertion recently, due mainly to the re-watching of a specific film.
Buoyed by teenage rebellion I had, in olden days, unconsciously decided to rebel against my father’s taste in music (actually very strong) and instead find my entertainment in chart-toppers and alternative genres such as ska and reggae. For a gangly white boy dressed in baggy t-shirts and skater shoes, this was not a good look.
Luckily there were other positive influences around me that I chose not to ignore, principle amongst them a pair of friends whose tutelage would resurface many years later when I realised that Reel Big Fish were not, in fact, the Eagles of our generation.
These friends, twins, were heavily involved in the cooler aspects of culture at the time. They were trendy, that is to say they gelled their hair, wore branded jeans and smelled almost overwhelmingly of Lynx Africa. They introduced me to bands I would otherwise have dismissed as nothing but noise against the carefully choreographed choral hooks of RBF: Radiohead. UNKLE. The Verve. Rage Against the Machine.
Their influence spread to my choice in cinema also. I was never quite as behind the times here as I was with music, but their parents’ propensity to allow late night viewings of 18 certificate films (something fiercely forbidden at chez Godwin) opened my eyes to new genres and new experiences.
One of the films they championed was Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. I have come to have a deep appreciation for Luhrmann over the years, but at first his cacophonously messy take on Shakespeare was a little too much. I liked it, but I wasn’t quite taken by it as my friends.
It was this film I watched recently and found, half-expectedly but still surprisingly, a flood of memories returning unbidden. These were no fuzzy recollections, these were that rarest of recollections that encompass a very real sense of place, and context and of emotion. It was the soundtrack, rather than the film itself which inspired this.
As soon as the Des’ree song Kissing You started behind the balcony scene, I remembered a specific moment in time; the twins’ bedroom on a sunny Saturday afternoon, the sunlight beaming in behind closed, semi-transparent blinds, the three of us thrown messily across the room reading various magazines and listening to the soundtrack on an old portable CD player.
It was surprising how vivid the memory was, and how sad it made me. The overwhelming feeling was the potential of the scene and the absence of it back in the real world.
I grew up listening to parents and teachers repeat the old adage that school years are the best of your life. I didn’t believe them at the time, but who can? At that age, and with those experiences, you are completely unable to grasp everything the statement encompasses. It is not a warning nor a piece of implied advice, it is a statement on the presence of unfulfilled potential.
Not that we were aware of this back then. To us the world was complex and full of worries, but the worries of young men and women; test results, double maths, unreturned looks cast sparingly across classrooms. I had nothing to compare life to besides this, and I was completely unaware of the sheer amount of potential whirling around my head.
I lived a privileged upbringing. I had no worries about money or poverty. As I would later learn, my very race and gender gave me multiple unspoken privileges and advantages in life. Looking back it is easy to wonder ‘what if’ or ‘why didn’t I…?’ but I have no particular regrets about this stage of my life. Looking back on potential and feeling the absence of it now is not a lamentation of wasted opportunity but a strange nostalgia for an unfettered life free from responsibly and social conscience. It is an inherently selfish impulse, one that could, if indulged, lead to bitterness and anger.
As the song faded so too did the images. Radiohead’s Talk Show Host, littered throughout the film like an analogy of loneliness, stoked different memories and the sight of the childlike leads did similarly for disparate pangs of late 90s angst. But the memory of freedom never returned.
It still hasn’t.
This is the third entry in my ongoing series of freewritten doodlings. The rational behind this is here: https://goo.gl/hi9Ub7
