Nostalgia
Nai Palm
People ask if it’s lonely to travel around so much. My answer to this cliché travelers-blog question is: moving always brings nostalgia.
I love nostalgia. It is is one of the most complex and introspective emotions I get to feel. A lot of the music I make is rooted in nostalgia. I try to paint the image of a place and the memories of who I used the be into a song, and that song helps me commune with myself as I evolve. If this seems really vague and hard to grasp, that’s normal. Nostalgia is like this hazy stew of memories that I can’t understand because there are too many pieces and ways to interpret them. It’s bittersweet. I can take the same memories and spin them around in my head for as long as I want, finding their joy and their pain. But, just like with recorded music, it is something that has already been made — all I have is the recording. My memories are of times and places and versions of myself that have passed and won’t ever come back… there is grief. And, although I’m sad for the loss, I’m so happy that it happened and that I get to remember it today.
Nostalgia is also seductive! When I leave, there is no way to tie up all of my loose-ends in a bow and say “alright, I’m ready to be reborn!” Sometimes my life is uprooted in a week’s notice. The urge to continue exploring unfinished stories in my different lives always stays with me. Except that everyone has already moved. There is no ‘pause button’, and so I try to let them go. That can be pretty lonely. But then I spin it again in a positive way: I’m so grateful that I get to carry everyone (all the fabulous people that I love) along with me on a rectangle in my pocket.
Nostalgia is dreamy and colorful and full of random details that feel alive and that let me relive…
Julia, David, and Daniel on the cliffs in San Francisco
Becca, Othman, and Olivier during Halloween in Montréal
Jess and Lea at a port in Tanzania
Amanda, drowning in bags on a bus in Zanzibar
My family, our yearly photo on the stairs at home in Lyon
Gaia, Nicole, and my dad on a boat in Venice
Elisa, Yuki, David (our quartet) in Oakland