Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 9 : Can You Go Back?

If you can successfully program your Tom Tom, no doubt the answer is yes.

But even if you can go back, should you? OK this is all sounding terribly oblique. What I am getting at is that as you get a teensy weensy bit older - why I am barely out of nappies! - you begin to think back to all the TV shows, pop groups, movies etc of your childhood and youth, and want to relive it all over again. But nostalgia is a cruel mistress, and while you may think watching an episode of CHiPS or Hart to Hart will magically transport you back to them thar olden and golden days, it's rarely that straightforward.

For a start, while there is much about my childhood I value - loving, caring parents, happy family life - there is much I don't value too - endless teasing at school, social isolation, the goldfish bowl existence of being a pastor's son - and so while rewatching a Charlie's Angels episode or listening to ABBA's Arrival may evoke warm and fuzzy memories of yesterday, you also get the other passengers in the hits and memories bus and some of them are best left standing at the bus stop way back in 1979, thank you very much.

The other thing that complicates going back for me is that I love the Here and Now. I am not one of those forty something guys wallowing in the fabulous memories of my youth, so rose tinted that their eyes have gone an irridescent shade of pink. While I value the past, I am not bound by it, and when there are such good shows as Weeds, Community, Modern Family, Big Bang Theory, and Nurse Jackie on offer, and new music by groups as talented as Japayork, Coldplay and Washed Up, just listening to old music or watching old TV shows would be a waste of a vital and intriguing present.

All this pondering on the merits of going back was prompted by seeing the Tron sequel on the weekend - here's the link to my review of it on my other pop culture oriented blog http://sparklyprettybriiiight.blogspot.com/ - when I discovered you can go back and still be firmly anchored in the present all at the same time. The trick is to get that balance right, and value the past without trying to recreate it.