Further Thoughts on Nostalgia

 I really didn't feel like I captured the essence of what I wanted to say yesterday, and this will be challenging with the lack of my reference books (notably Anthony Esolen's work) here at the school I am teaching at today.  However, I will give a more cited addendum to this later, as it is integral to the discussion. 

The one thing I wanted to talk about is the intersection of nostalgia and dreams.  Both our nostalgic sentiments and the dreams we have are tied into our memories, and often our dream world constructs a composite of bits and pieces of memories that play upon that nostalgic feeling.  Some of our most vivid dreams are often experienced in particular during times of intense stress and fatigue in our lives, as if our minds are gifting us a coping mechanism to ease the burdens a bit.  I have noticed that in my own life as well, when some of my most intense and vivid dream sequences have happened when I was facing some major life challenges and transitions.  This is why I am not that easy to dismiss dreams, because our ability to dream is a gift of God he has given us, and we have that for a reason.  Dreams can also serve as a sort of heavenly email server where God can send us messages too, and in the Bible are numerous accounts of people being visited in dreams by either the Lord himself or one of his angels.  Likewise, Satan and his minions can manipulate our dreams too though, and this is why we need to be careful too.   Not every nightmare is an attack of Satan, please understand that.  Many nightmares can also be due to eating something that doesn't agree with us, and they are also a manifestation of some of our worst fears too.  Nonetheless, our dreams are a dimension where supernatural activity can happen, both good and bad, and that merits a whole other discussion in itself.  The focus of dreams for the purposes of this discussion are as that psychological coping mechanism God gives us to deal with personal stress, and an area our dreams pick up on is the realm of nostalgia. 

Speaking of a personal situation like this, I recall when I was 16 years old I had an interesting dream that fell into this definition.  At the time, my mom and I had just went through a chaotic year where, after living 6 years in the town of Kirby, WV, we found ourselves on the move, and it was a bit of an adjustment.  That same year, the catastrophic 1985 Flood happened in the area of West Virginia where we lived, and Mom and I had moved with my grandparents to the town of Rowlesburg, WV.  For those who remember that flood, Rowlesburg was hit particularly hard by the overflowing Cheat River, and the town then looked like a war zone.  Our moving there in the middle of that was exacerbated by the fact that Mom and I had been moved around a lot over the course of a few months, and when finally Mom was able to get a job taking care of an elderly lady in her 90s a few miles away on Salt Lick Road, just south of the town of Terra Alta, I honestly felt stressed then.  There were two things I fell back on that I believed saved me - one was my conversion to Christ that January at a little Baptist church in Rowlesburg, and the other was my vintage big band collection.  Both of these would play significant roles in how I coped with my new chapter of life then, and the second in particular had an impact on my dreams then.  Let me go into detail here.

Besides actually collecting records then, I also had a late-night radio program I listened to called "Henry Boggen's Sunday Night Show" on WBT-AM out of Charlotte, NC.  I had been listening to that religiously for over 4 years at this point, and it was a regular Sunday night tradition.  Being I often had to get up for school the next day then, I would lay in bed and listen to it with my headphones so as not to disturb anyone, and I dozed off frequently as this show was broadcast from 10PM to 1AM.  Falling to sleep with that music in my ears led me to have dreams too, including a very interesting one I will get into now as I vividly recall it. 

In this dream, I was in a desert traveling somewhere, and as I was doing so I came across what looked like a diner in the middle of a small scrub-laden oasis.  In that diner there was music playing - my music, vintage big bands - and I remember sitting down and being served by a beautiful dark-haired counter girl who also ended up becoming my girlfriend in the dream.  She served me fried chicken (one of my favorite foods) and a delicious cherry pie for dessert.  The dream was pleasant, a little romantic, and it was as if I could hear that music (I had probably fallen asleep listening to my program I figured).  Remember, this was at a very stressful and transitional time in my life, and I was very uncertain about a lot, but I was also trying to hang onto my sanity then too.  To this day I recall that dream, and it still makes me feel something nice inside when I think of it. 

Another dream I had was more recent, and it entailed a college campus.  The campus itself looked a lot like Southeastern University with a little bit of Graceville thrown in, and in this particular dream I lived in a nice dormitory-like apartment in campus.  I was actually in the dream though headed to the library, and one thing I noticed when I was inside was this HUGE sign that advertised the most complete collection of vintage jazz/big band recordings ever to exist, and I wanted it. Somehow, I did actually manage to get it too - the collection had over 2000 CD recordings in it of practically every record I ever looked for, and it was magnificent.  Many of the other details of this dream escape me, but I do remember it too was at a time of uncertainty - this was only a few years ago, when Barbara and I had first separated and there was a lot of uncertainty which was haunting my mind then. Again, I don't know if any of these dreams are significant as far as a message is concerned, but they are fascinating in their details. 

A third dream I had dealt with something other than music, and there was a religious undertone to this one.  I was living in a suburban house that looked like here in Baltimore somewhere, and it was a beautiful 3-story place in which several other guys lived as well.  However, in the dream there was this disturbing feeling that one of these guys was doomed to hell for some reason, and it was up to me to tell him.  So, as we were talking in an informal circle in the driveway of the house, the guy who was supposed to receive this fate essentially just keeled over dead - he was a very young guy in his 20s too.  What was jarring about that later was that the Physics teacher we had last year, a young guy named Louis, looked unnervingly like that guy in the dream.  Was there a message there?  Who's to say?  However, there was also a nostalgic dimension to that dream too, as it embodied some fond memories of my own living here when I was younger.  The Baltimore of today - especially this inner-city part where I live and work - looks nothing like the place in that dream, but it is nonetheless a sort of confirmation that maybe I am supposed to be in this area for some odd reason.  

Nostalgia often does not only take in actual memories, but it can also take in idealized versions of experiences too.  Our dreams give us a glimpse into what that looks like, and it is actually very fascinating stuff.  Again, our nostalgia actually shapes our legacy we pass to others, and understanding why we dream what we do, why certain smells and sensory perceptions often evoke certain memories, and even why that song we have no idea of the title of somehow evokes that feeling, all of this has a nostalgic dimension.  Not only does nostalgia shape our legacy, but it also helps define our identity as well.  This is why it cannot be underestimated and when these moments come up we need to take them more seriously than we do sometime.

I am going to have more to say on this later for sure once I am able to access the reading material I need to have, and when I do, I will be revisiting this topic later.   I also want to later talk about the role of deja vu moments and other things as well.  Thank you, and look forward to visiting with you again soon.