On Toxic Nostalgia, Trees, and Trauma

Outrun, Mallwave, Jesus's Son, and an unprovoked attack.

Nostalgia is endearing in a tween, amusing in your twenties, cloying in your forties, and can become toxic at any age, but seems most often terminal when it sets in past retirement age. Two of my favorite discoveries are genres invented by Zennials who are nostalgic for times they “missed.” One is called Outrun, which embraces the neon consumer excess of the ‘80s. The genre takes its name from the debut LP from French electronic musician Kavinsky, who is probably best known for writing some of the music for the movie Drive, which embraced this aesthetic. It is a subgenre of synthwave, some of which feels more like ‘90s-era video game music.

My favorite band that embraces this vibe is Dragon Inn 3, a side project of members of We Still Love You, Boris Yeltsin. Their album Double Line feels like an album from an ‘80s pocket universe, or the Virtual Reality afterlife from the Black Mirror episode “San Junipero.” This is one of my favorite tracks:

Another one, which I learned about from the “Life and Death of the American Mall” episode of Matthew Christopher’s Abandoned America podcast, is called … Mallwave. They feel like they’ve missed out on the community we had in the Mall, and I don’t blame them; we didn’t have to worry about mass shootings when we went. The worst I experienced was a car that flipped over on the way back from Willowbrook. I don’t rhapsodize about malls, but they are a public space and the courts ruled so, when mall cops tried to oust everyone from the homeless, Black kids, and even elderly mall walkers.

I don’t miss them, I’m more of a fan of adaptive reuse of mills and other industry sites for craft and farmers markets, and “downtowns” with open space, but in the winter, a mall is more comfortable, and the right type could be nice. Of course, this is all through the lens of capitalism; we should have places where everyone in the community is allowed to gather without needing cash for a cup of coffee. Libraries are picking up the slack in this regard, where the malls have failed.

Mallwave is sort of a remix of Muzak through guitar synth:

“It sounds stupid, but mallwave does let me escape from the shittiness of everyday life,” Tills explains. “It’s just a couple of hours in a day where everything at least feels okay, that I don’t have to worry about whether or not I’m going to get a job, the political situation in the U.S. — all that shit. I guess it makes me think that there was a better time, or a time when people in this country felt better.”

from “The Teens Who Listen to ‘Mallwave’ Are Nostalgic for an Experience They’ve Never Had” in MEL Magazine

Mallwave isn’t just for succor, it’s also a critique, just like Outrun; both exaggerate the aesthetic just enough, with hyper neon, vapid lyrics, or teasing jingles, to give it verisimilitude and a hint of irony, so you can’t tell if it’s earnest appreciation or mockery. It reminds me of the photography of Juno Calypso, specifically The Honeymoon, a set taken at a Poconos romantic resort.

There’s been so much good reading this week. I finished reading The Men by Sandra Newman, which blew me away. It’s one of those books you can barely talk about without spoiling it, but it begins with every human possessing a Y chromosome disappearing from Earth, the effects, and finally, the cause. It’s a reflection on feminist science fiction utopias such as “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” by Alice Sheldon (James Tiptree, Jr.) and the works of Joanna Russ¹, but it’s more than its premise.² Read it if you want, and we’ll talk about it (you can comment here, or simply reply to the newsletter emails, and I’ll get them). If you want to read along, my next reads are Gender Queer, by Maia Kobabe, and The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown, by Lawrence Block.

I’m also reading How to Read Nature by Tristan Gooley, which has exercises to focus on truly seeing nature around you. For example, the types of tiny clouds you see high in the sky when it’s clear, before the storm clouds roll in. But it’s not all practical. It’s about enjoying nature for its own sake, and having a understanding of it helps. One of the exercises was to sketch a tree. Here’s mine:

I cheated and used fine marker and colored pencils. Next, I have to write a short story about this exercise, so you’ll see that when I get around to it. I’ve been toying with the idea of entering National Novel Writing Month in a few days, which will likely eat up all my time. What will I write? I’m not sure yet. I’ve got a few books in my head. I haven’t written fiction in months, and I think this will give me a much-needed kick in the ass.

Jesus’s Son by Denis Johnson changed the short story world. Two great pieces have been published on it recently: “Writing for Survival” by Alexander Chee in Playboy, which explains how Johnson first told the stories and refused to write them down, and this one in the New Yorker, about the real fatal car crash that inspired the opening story. If you haven’t read Jesus’s Son, you can do it in one sitting, but they are best one at a time. They are all about a character named Fuckhead, based on Johnson during his drink and drug-fueled days. Having spent a lot of time with the addicted, some who survived and some who didn’t, they weren’t as easy for me to digest as they are for some, but they have a great power, and anyone who has felt like an outsider will appreciate them.

I have a lot to share, but I’ll save some for next time. This one, you should read. Hannah is a great writer, and she went through something that no one should. But it makes one think about the meaning of “taking risks for your writing.” She’s also very funny, even after experiencing trauma. Read this, and have a good weekend.

Suck it up, Buttercup

1. I have a copy of The Female Man but I haven’t read it yet. High time to.

2. It’s also difficult to talk about because a horror author had a book with a similar premise, except testosterone level was the identifier; she got an ARC of The Men and mocked it on her Patreon, and kicked off a Twitter dogpile campaign against it. I am jaded, but I find it hard to believe it wasn’t done as self-promotion. Genetics isn’t what defines who we are, but it exists. I wish my Y chromosome didn’t make me more susceptible to disease. But it does.