#161 - You Must Remember This
She's not thinking about the future
She's not spinning her wheels
She doesn't think at all about the past
She thinking long and hard
About that high wild sound
And wondering will it last?
-Sonic Youth, "Hey Joni," Daydream Nation
The musical nostalgia battles continue.
There is something new going on concerning memory and music.
Digitalization is affecting collective memory, as the musical archives expand in terms of access and vastness.
So too, a generational shift is in progress, some kind of transition having to do with the last explosion of "indie" rock in the early 1990s and the current relation of American youth to music and memory.
Perhaps there is even a political dimension to the current refabrication of the memory machine, the hint of a possibility that the past might be refigured to grapple with the present and the future. But how?
Can nostalgia be used as a resource for changing the present, or is it merely escapism?
16 June 2007