Those Were The Days? (The treachery of memory and the creeping dread Of Nostalgia)

Dictionary.com has several definitions of Nostalgia... one that stands out is:

"A bittersweet longing for things, persons, or situations of the past."

While another that runs a close second is:

"A wistful or excessively sentimental sometimes abnormal yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition."

So we shall take this as our springboard...

Let's look at society at large... right now in music - there's a resurgence of "80's sounds" on the somewhat jagged edge of the music scene... I bleev it was called Electroclash or somesuch by the hipsters... I just noticed that the big fat analogue synth sounds that were so cool back in the early 80's were suddenly popping up again. Now this is cool as I've always harbored a secret love for out-of-sync oscillators fighting for dominance of a waveform (that's sorta how synth's work dontchaknow) but is this forward motion for culture?

And then there's our current shift towards conservativism politically.
I can't remember where I read it, but someone once said that conservatism looked towards the past for strategies of dealing with the present and/or future. To me this seems to be an inherently bad idea... since if those strategies worked back then... how come we're still not using them?

But on a less general scale... talking about nostalgia in the personal sense.

Think back to a wonderful time from your past. Say...oh, 10 years or more back. Try and remember it as clearly as possible...Got it? Now quick, write it down exactly as you recall it.
Now, if you're lucky enough to still be in touch with people (other than family) from that time in your life... contact one of them... and bring up that time. See how much your memory corresponds to what they remember.

Go ahead I'll wait...

Okay - so probably about 60 ~ 75% of it you and that person both agreed on as indisputable rememberances of what happened, right?

So then. What about that other 40 ~ 25% ? How do you account for the variance there?

That's the nostalgia... IMHO.

So let's twist this little footpath a little further...

Say there's a person in the past... one that's gotta lotta fond memories wrapped up around them... And you somehow reconnect with them...

So here you are, a different person than you were 10 years ago... and yer trying to re-establish contact with this person, where your entire frame of reference is built on data that is at best, 10 years old.

Awkward to say the least.

So... how does the person you are "now" talk to the "now" version of that person, even though both of you are working from the "then" versions of each other? DO the same reference points still work? Are shared private jokes still valid? Mutual memories still fresh and pristine in one another's mind?
Hopeless Romanticism aside... Is there that much in common?
Are there embers of whatever fire sparked the friendship/romance/relationship still smouldering?
Would it be worth fanning them? Or perhaps applying just enough of a breeze to let the embers grow into a different sort of fire?
Or has there been such a radical change in you and/or them that while the thought of maintaining contact is nice... the stark reality of it is that who you were then ain't who you are now?



Our cultural signposts of movies books and music all make it sound like picking up where you left off is an easy thing... and that all the time inm between will seem to have been as naught or some such poetic folderoll... seems to me the truth of the matter is far more difficult. After all, once you get past teh polite comments about each other's current positions in life... what do you talk about?