Comments on: And in the end …

By: johnosborne

johnosborne — Wed, 02 Oct 2013 11:32:30 +0000

Indeed you do, Graham.

By: Graham Smart

Graham Smart — Wed, 02 Oct 2013 03:31:20 +0000

OK, John. Here’s a stab at “15 of the truest words ever written”:

“And in the end, the love you take
Is equal to the love you make”

Have I got it?

Graham

By: wendy wynne-jones

wendy wynne-jones — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 16:19:55 +0000

Music is a huge part of my soul and existence ( although I don’t play it much at home – perhaps from years of other people’s opinions!!) I think sometimes the music of eras other than our own can fill us with a sweet nostalgia, rather than an aching longing. The aching is in the music – I love the great opera arias, for instance – but I also am filled with the great “big band” tunes and songs. I was singing along to one at a dance once, and my dance partner said – “why do you know that? You are way too young”. While it is obviously a pretty silly thing it say, it stuck with me, and makes me delight even more when hearing my grandaughters singing “old stuff” with as much pleasure as the new, sometimes even MORE!

By: johnosborne

johnosborne — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 12:01:33 +0000

Thanks, Johnny. You may well be right. I am very fortunate that I have never wished to be in any time but my own “present”, but that certainly doesn’t mean that there aren’t things in the past which give meaning and substance to our lives, creating our identities, individual and collective.

By: Johnny Alam

Johnny Alam — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 11:56:56 +0000

The answer the meant-to-be rhetorical question “What is it about 22 minutes of music …including many who were not even born when the record was released?” is nostalgia.

J. Ronald Oakley states: “as so often happens after periods of change and strife, people sought escape from the present by turning back to a golden age, yearning for a time they never had, for the older generation, for a time they once had, but now had lost.” People do not necessarily nostaligze about periods in their own life but about better times at large; “nostalgia for the bygone times does not require having actually experienced those times.” Andrew Wernick even contends that the times longed for in nostalgia “might never have been present at all.”

Janelle L. Wilson argues that nostalgia provides a link with a previous self across time through which we derive a continuity of identity and a meaning for our existence…