Preemptive Nostalgia
A Balbachian Theory
Remember When We Used to "Remember When..."?
The Balbachs also had an impressive collection of music on compact disc, cassette, and vinyl. There were even a couple of dusty boxes of eight-tracks stuffed into the back of the large oak stereo cabinet, which Rudy was now digging through intently. Daniel had spent many an afternoon in his friend's living room copying CDs onto cassette tapes—everything from Robyn Hitchcock to Syd Barrett, the Beatles, and David Bowie, to Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade and Tchaikovski's 1812 Overture—and making mixes for their friends.
"Aha!" Rudy said, pulling a brown double-LP jacket from the record collection and removing the first record to place on the turntable. "You know—" he began, but then paused to concentrate on placing the needle onto the LP he had set spinning. The first four electric guitar notes of the Overture to Jesus Christ Superstar boomed from the speakers. "Gah!" Rudy exclaimed, practically diving for the volume knob to turn it down. He then pushed his glasses back up his nose and smiled ironically. "So, as I was saying... Listening to this has led me to the formation of a theory."
"Of course it has," said Daniel, borrowing a pinch of Rudy's hauteur.
The Overture was now in full swing, sweeping through the leitmotifs that would be repeated again and again throughout. In driving past one day with it blaring out of his car window,
Mr. Marlborough had inadvertently inspired Rudy and Daniel—and then MacGill, Adam, Nick, and the others—to give Jesus Christ Superstar a listen. The popularity of Andrew Lloyd Weber at the time had contributed to their curiosity, but Jesus Christ Superstar had been just deliciously retro enough to make them agree: "Jesus is cool." Daniel, in particular, loved the album, and in no small part because it had come down from Jim Marlborough. He'd made a cassette copy of it from Rudy's parents' copy, and he had listened to it at full blast on his parents' stereo in the living room almost every night for the past month. From the hip hubbub of "What's the Buzz," through the host of hosannas and toe-tapping plots of Herod and the Pharisees, to the final psychedelic freak-out of the "Crucifixion," he couldn't get enough. His mom or dad would occasionally check in on him, doubtless wondering what had snapped in his brain to make him want to rock out to a twenty-one-year-old musical about Christ. But rather than broaching the subject of a potentially impending spiritual awakening, they would just ask him please to turn it down. Listening to Judas Iscariot, that tragic and myopic materialist who thinks Jesus' followers have "too much heaven on their minds," Daniel was always reminded somehow of MacGill's late-night patio rants on Communism and "going to the mountain." And accompanying the Jesus songs, he often pictured Jim Marlborough—robed and sandaled, a hippy-haired rebel messiah dragging off his Camel Light—belting out the apocryphal rock gospel of Our Lord and Savior:As much as Daniel recognized the pop cheesiness of it all, his utter lack of religious upbringing allowed him to imagine there was something thought provoking in Weber's take on the conflict between Christ's Earthly politics and His role in establishing the Kingdom of Heaven. Plus, the moral struggle of Christ's betrayer certainly set the show apart from the lighthearted American book musicals they'd put up at Glade High. And finally, the Middle East was lately on everyone's mind—what with the recent invasion of Kuwait and the build-up of American military in the Gulf during Operation Desert Shield. So "We are occupied, have you forgotten how put down we are" carried with it a hint of the coming war.
"It's got me thinking about that Mr. Marlborough," Rudy said, now examining the jacket cover of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars with interest. "He's the type that's fascinated by the late sixties as though they were some Golden Age he can only fondly recollect but never live again—or even once."
"I don't see that," Daniel argued, a twinge annoyed with Rudy's snap judgment. "And you said yourself he's not much of a hippy. I mean, sure. There's the Jesus Christ Superstar and the Be Here Now, but—"
"That's beside the point. And anyway it's not a criticism, Daniel, just an observation. I'm making a larger argument here. You see, I'd bet he was the type of teenager who raided his parents' record collection."
"And so are we," Daniel interjected.
"Ah, yes." Rudy nodded and stroked his chin. "And here's the theory bit, see? Sure, we've all heard about the end of history"—Daniel hadn't, but he nodded anyway—"but I'm suggesting here the end of cultural history.... From here on out, everyone will be the Mr. Marlborough type. His generation and our own—"
"Well, we're the same generation, technically," Daniel corrected him.
"—we're all infected with preemptive nostalgia."
A half smile crept across Daniel's lips. "And what, pray tell, is 'preemptive nostalgia'?" It became quite easy to slip into his Balbachian mode while he was at their house.
With a quick flick of his wrist, Rudy tossed out a definition: "The echo of enjoyment in experiencing, or trying to experience, something that is already exhausted. Something that has run its course. Something beyond our reach. Look at our age group's attraction to seventies culture," Rudy continued unabated, "bellbottoms and all. How absurd is that? Soon the eighties will be the fad again... And round and round she goes. We're possessed by a fetish for the recent past. All of us suffer from a... a 'Born-at-the-Wrong-Time-ism,' a—"
" 'Minivercheevism'?" Daniel offered.
"Exactly. And this sentiment has become an epidemic. Our problem, and Mr. Marlborough's, is that we wish each thing could happen more than once. We're all strung out on longing for patterns and repetition, and rather than creating our own present we prefer to recycle someone else's past."
"I suppose some might accuse me of that," Daniel said somberly. Then he brightened. "But can't someone with this—this, what, disease?—couldn't he simply, you know, change direction?"
Rudy scoffed. "I'm talking about a cultural phenomenon here, not just some personal habit. We have on our hands a widespread inability to accept that the arrow of time flies in one direction, that the broken teacup—or moment, relationship, era—cannot be mended."
"Your mother won't like that," Daniel said, nodding toward the kitchen.
Rudy ignored him. "Even if a few here and there—you and I, for example—were to change direction, it would be impossible to stem the tide. The mass flows uncontrollably in one direction or another. Resist as he may, the individual is swept up. So this trend will continue till it exhausts itself—maybe even to the point of simultaneous nostalgia."
Daniel raised a questioning eyebrow.
"Bands will stage reunion tours before they have even broken up. They won't even release debut albums—just Greatest Hits collections. Fear of what might have passed us by will drive us to skip the first experience itself and jump immediately to the nostalgic recollection of it..."
"You don't think you're going a bit too far?" Daniel asked, turning to scan the nearby bookshelf.
"Hmph," said Rudy. "What good is a theory that can't be taken too far?"