I see so much of the world through the prism of music. I have music on for much of the day and spend far more time listening to it than, say, watching television. It’s bordering on, perhaps well into the territory of, obsession and I am happy that way. Since retiring from the wacky world of full time work, nearly ten years now, it would be very easy to slide into the world of near permanent nostalgia, gazing back at old picture albums, re-sharing ‘memories’ from social media, listening to the same old music I listened to decades ago, always looking back, never forward. Yesterday, once more, can be a comfy, safe space where we can pretend that the past was always better than the present. It isn’t, not really, just different.
The way I feel about music reflects, to some extent, how I feel about life. I am happy to wallow in a pool of nostalgia and listen to the music of my youth and even childhood. After all, the passage of time doesn’t make things better or worse. The Beatles, the most underrated – you read it right – band of all time still stand head and shoulders above any band in history but I find the same pleasure from new and emerging acts like Fred Again, Say She She and Caroline Polachek.
I find that of all social media outlets, Facebook is the best one to remind me to at least occasionally look forward. The platform is increasingly the province of the over 50s and upwards and of course those of us within that demographic have a lot more to look back on that Da Yoot. And Facebook is programmed to provide us with all the nostalgia they think we need. Sometimes, I need to take a step away in order to take a step forward.
Entirely predictably, the lyrics from songs remind me not to constantly live in the past. I am definitely someone who likes to be in my safe place and I am by nature a bit of a home bird. Indeed, it is only recently when we branched out from going to exactly the same place on holiday every year, a little longer since I listened to nothing but old music and shared my own, frankly boring, life on social media. Then I think of the theme to Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads, written by Ian La Frenais and Mike Hugg, the lyrics leap out at me:
Oh what happened to you?
Whatever happened to me?
What became of the people we used to be?
Tomorrow’s almost over, today went by so fast
It’s the only thing to look forward to, the past
That very last line hits me very hard. If I’m not careful the past could be all I have to look forward to.
My partner, who is unquestionably the brains of our family operation, has taught me – yes, literally taught me – that there is life beyond the safe and familiar. I am very much the man I always was – this is not all good news – but my outlook on life, in accepting the new and different has been in gentle transition.
I have never thought that the past was better than today. Senior folk are fond of posting memes on social media, despairing of a modern world where cash is slowly disappearing and where you can access the whole world via the internet on a hand held computer AKA a mobile phone. I don’t despair of these changes, these improvements to my life; I have learned to embrace them. And through change, which can be A Good Thing despite protestations to the contrary, my life is better.
People like holding on to yesterday and that’s fine, too. Life can be a dreadful struggle due to all kinds of reasons and I would never seek to belittle someone who finds solace in the familiar by way of repetition. It worked well enough for me but there came a time, hastened by the loss of close family and friends, when I found myself confronted by my mortality and I could either make better use of that time by stretching out or by living the exact same life over and over again. Naturally, another song came to mind, Rick Nelson’s Garden Party which he wrote after being booed and heckled by a crowd who didn’t like his new look and just wanted to live in the past. A key line went thus:
Now if you gotta play at garden partiesI wish you a lotta luckBut if memories were all I sangI’d rather drive a truck
I couldn’t have put it better myself (obviously, because if I could have I’d be a famous writer).
