Anemoia

FEATURE | NOSTALGIA

Written by Stu Paul (he/him) | Contributing Writer

Illustrated by Tashi Donnelly (she/her) | @tashi_rd | Feature Editor

I often get a wistful feeling while listening to music or watching a film made before I was born. The haunting, anxiety-inducing synths of the original Terminator soundtrack; the grainy, saturated hues of a film like The Warriors or To Live and Die in L.A; the bustling soundscapes of a neighbourhood park during the early 1990s - all of these vignettes conjure up an odd sensation in my mind. It is a feeling of missing out on something important, of having lost something that was never mine to begin with. It is a nostalgia for a time that one never even experienced - a feeling described by the writer John Koenig as ‘anemoia’. 

The internet tells me that experiencing anemoia is common in the modern age. With the dystopian freight train of late-stage capitalism hurtling through our lifetime, intent on cooking the planet and stomping on worker’s rights wherever possible, it doesn’t surprise me that many people daydream about a simpler time. A time before smartphones and social media wormed their insidious technological tentacles into our collective hive mind. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good brain-rot doom-scroll as much as the next primate hooked up to the internet and staring at an illuminated screen. But there is something in my soul that feels wholesome and right about indulging in a nostalgia that is pure imagination to its core. I remember this feeling the first time I listened to the 90s hip-hop duo Gang Starr. While watching the first season of the 80s-fuelled TV show Stranger Things. I had it during my weird preteen phase of blasting the prog-rock band Rush while furiously playing retro Space Invaders on a PC browser. It is a romanticised, idealised image of the past - a time that I never lived in (that actually no one lived in) but longed to be a part of. The community, the music, the hope for the future. At the very least, the lack of TikTok and fucking Elon Musk. A simpler, better time. Of course, we have to be wary of lingering too long with these rose-tinted nostalgia glasses in place. The decades of the 70s, 80s, and 90s were undoubtedly a mean and insensitive time - complete with rampant sexism, racism, and homophobia that were acceptable in mainstream discourse and society. The anemoia I feel for these decades is not rooted in any nostalgic longing for a time when queers stayed in the closet, domestic violence was widespread, and cigarette smoke permeated public spaces like an acrid smog. Rather, the specific illusory image of pre-9/11 America displayed on screen and through music captures a particular aesthetic mood or ‘vibe’ and resonates with me and many others in a deeply personal way. 

For me, the emotional resonance with the past goes hand-in-hand with American media, without which I would struggle to visualise the snapshot of nostalgia that I never lived through. Some people can achieve this through reading literature or poetry, both fiction and non-fiction. While I am a voracious consumer of books I struggle to find the same feeling of anemoia from reading a written text. Film, TV shows, and music are the mediums of nostalgia delivery that have me feeling ‘anemoiac’ deep in my bones. It might have something to do with the fact that these streams of media are so often intertwined with pop culture at large, serving as time capsule snapshots of the zeitgeist at that particular time and place. These past pop cultures can become relevant and meaningful to us, despite our never participating in them - and their effects on us are those of homage, mimicry and recurrence. The cyclical nature of trends in modern pop culture is readily apparent to those paying attention. Whether it’s the recent resurgence and popularity of 80s-inspired dance music or the widespread nostalgia-soaked films and TV shows of the past few years that utilise vintage soundtracks and Spielberg-esque narratives to capture the hearts and minds of young and old alike. Even fashion itself is not safe from the Nietzschean eternal recurrence of low-rise jeans, oversized flannel and hip-hop-inspired streetwear. These pop culture trends allow us to experience anemoia up close and personal; a weird form of aesthetic time travel that can feel both familiar and uncanny. Especially uncanny, if you start to go down the rabbit hole of Baudrillard and ‘Simulacra and Simulation’ and consider that we experience copies and imitations of things that either no longer exist or never even did in the first place. But that’s a blunt rotation for another time.

Anemoia - it’s a funny word made up by a funny guy. But it captures something profound, a nostalgia for something never experienced. Of course, in typical soulless capitalist fashion, the corporate suit husks masquerading as human beings will do their best to claw, squeeze, and extract every dollar that they can out of this amorphous nostalgic sentiment - but at the very least we might get some decent movies and music out of it. Or not. In the meantime, I’ll listen to my Soundgarden and watch my Point Break - at peace and content to float in the warm, comforting waters of sweet, sweet anemoia. 

And fuck Elon Musk.