The Little World

Easy to do for yourself – hard to do for others…

The theme for some of the displays seen at the WAMA exhibition revolved around nostalgia. The vague meaning of the word – a pain for the past – may be a lot more apposite than you’d think if your past was a pain. Some may take it as a characteristic of other people.

It can be marketed – every day we’ll see items sold using the word. It can be invented – some of those items are pretty suspect. It can be extraordinarily expensive while at the same time being tatty and unworkable. There are full-size nostalgia factories in Asia churning out antique artifacts as fast as the presses and moulds can run and they are being air-freighted to junk shops worldwide.

Oddly enough, the prices are never nostalgic. They are as up-to-date and wide-awake as the next NASDAQ reading. Funny that…

The real point one needs to remember is that no-one can be nostalgic for someone else. Memory is as individual as a fingerprint and it is no good pretending to a memory you do not have. I’ve tried it and ended up with the taste of mental ashes.

However, when you DO find items that resonate with you, and can assemble them in a way that re-tells your own tale, you do get a chance to let others see what your life was. Of course they won’t understand everything but even little hints are good.

Note: People will look fondly at your good memories but turn away from bad ones – if you embody complaint in model form they will ignore you.