Chuck Klosterman X, page 4
Except it doesn’t.
It doesn’t make sense to assume any art we remember from the past is going to automatically improve when we experience it again, solely because it has a relationship to whatever our life used to be like. We may not even remember that particular period with any clarity or importance. Those things might be connected, but they might also be unrelated. Certainly, some songs do remind us of specific people and specific places (and if someone were to directly ask you, “What songs make you nostalgic?” these are the tracks you’d immediately list). But most other old songs only replicate that sensation. The song connects you with nothing tangible, yet still seems warm and positive and extra-meaningful. It’s nostalgia without memory. And what this usually means is that you listened to that particular song a lot, during a stage in your life when you listened to a smaller number of songs with a much higher frequency. It might have nothing to do with whatever was happening alongside that listening experience; it might just be that you accidentally invested the amount of time necessary to appreciate the song to its fullest possible potentiality. What seems like “nostalgia” might be a form of low-grade expertise that amplifies the value of the listening event.
Here’s what I mean: For a big chunk of my adolescent life, I had only six cassettes. One of these was Ozzy Osbourne’s Bark at the Moon, which (as an adult) I consider to be the third- or fourth-best Ozzy solo album. But it’s definitely the Ozzy album I’ve listened to the most, solely because I only had five other tapes. It’s possible I’ve listened to Bark at the Moon more than all the other Ozzy solo albums combined.
The first song on side two of Bark at the Moon is titled “Centre of Eternity.” It’s a bit ponderous and a little too Ozzy-by-the-numbers. It means nothing to me personally and doesn’t make me long for the days of yore; until I started writing this essay, I hadn’t listened to it in at least ten years. But as soon as I replayed it, it sounded great. Moreover, it was a weirdly complete listening experience—not only did I like the song as a whole, but I also noticed and remembered all the individual parts (the overwrought organ intro, how Jake E. Lee’s guitar was tuned, when the drums come in, the goofy sci-fi lyrics, etc.). There may be a finite amount one can “get” from this particular song, but—whatever that amount is—I got it all. And this is not because of any relationship I’ve created between “Centre of Eternity” and my life from the middle 1980s, most of which I don’t remember. It’s because the middle ’80s were a time when I might lie on my bed and listen to a random Ozzy song 365 times over the course of twelve months. It’s not an emotional experience. It’s a mechanical experience. I’m not altering the value of “Centre of Eternity” by making it signify something specific to me, or my past. I’ve simply listened to it enough to have multiple auditory experiences simultaneously (and without even trying). The track sounds better than logic dictates because I (once) put in enough time to “get” everything it possibly offers. So maybe it’s not that we’re overrating our memories. Maybe it’s that we’re underrating the import of prolonged exposure. Maybe things don’t become meaningful unless we’re willing to repeat our interaction with whatever that “thing” truly is.
And this, I think, is what makes our current “nostalgia problem” more multifaceted than the one we had ten years ago. This process I just described? This idea of accidentally creating a false (but powerful) sense of nostalgia through inadvertent-yet-dogged repetition? That’s ending, and it’s not coming back.
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IN THE YEAR 2011, I don’t know why anyone would listen to any song every day for a year. Even if it was your favorite song of all time, it would be impossible to justify. It would be like going to the New York Public Library every morning and only reading Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Music is now (essentially) free, so no one who loves music is limited by an inability to afford cassettes. Radio is less important than it used to be (which means songs can’t be easily inflicted on audiences), MTV only shows videos when no one is watching, and streaming services are game changers. Equally important is the way modern pop music is recorded and produced: It’s deliberately designed for digital immediacy. Listen to the first ninety seconds of Rihanna’s new album Loud—if you don’t love it right away, you’re not going to love it a month from now. There’s also been a shift in how long a critic (professional or otherwise) can be expected to hear a product before judging its value. This is especially true for albums that are supposed to be important—most meaningful responses to Radiohead’s The King of Limbs and Kanye and Jay-Z’s Watch the Throne happened within twenty-four hours of their embargoed release. When someone in 2011 complains that a specific song is being “played to death,” it usually just means it’s been licensed to too many commercials and movie trailers and feels more like a commodity.
Now, no one can irrefutably declare that this evolution is bad, good, or merely different; it seems like it will (probably) be negative for artists, positive for casual consumers, and neutral for serious music fans. But it’s absolutely going to change what we classify (rightly or wrongly) as “nostalgia.” If you hate nostalgia, this is good news. “Excellent,” you probably think. “Now I won’t have to listen to people trying to convince me that Pearl Jam’s Riot Act is secretly awesome, based on the argument that they used to listen to Pearl Jam’s Ten in high school.” From a practical standpoint, there’s no historical loss to the genocide of self-made nostalgia. The Internet will warehouse what people’s minds do not. (And since the Internet is a curator-based medium, it’s a naturally backward-looking medium.) People won’t need to “remember” Pearl Jam in order for Pearl Jam to survive forever. In a hundred years, we will still have a more complete, more accurate portrait of Eddie Vedder than of Mozart or John Philip Sousa or Chuck Berry, even if no one in America is still aware that a song titled “Jeremy” once existed. It’s uncomfortable to admit this, but technology has made the ability to remember things irrelevant. Intellectually, having a deep memory used to be a real competitive advantage. Now it’s like having the ability to multiply four-digit numbers in your head—impressive, but not essential.
Yet people will still want to remember stuff.
People enjoy remembering things, and particularly things that happened in their youth. Remembering creates meaning. There are really only two stages in any existence—what we’re doing now, and what we were doing then. That’s why random songs played repeatedly take on a weight that outsizes their ostensive worth: We can unconsciously hear the time and energy we invested, all those years ago. But no one really does that anymore. No one endlessly plays the same song out of necessity. So when this process stops happening—when there are no more weirdos listening to “Centre of Eternity” every day for a year, without even particularly liking it—what will replace that experience?
I suspect it will be replaced by the actions of strangers.
Connectivity will replace repetition. Instead of generating false nostalgia by having the same experience over and over, we will aggregate false nostalgia from those fleeting moments when everyone seemed to be doing the same thing at once. It won’t be a kid playing the same song 1,000 times in a row. It will be that kid remembering when he and 999 other people all played the same song once (and immediately discussed it on Twitter, or on whatever replaces Twitter). It will be a short, shared experience that seems vast enough to be justifiably memorable. And I don’t know what that will feel like, and I don’t know if it will be better or worse. But I’m sure it will make some people miss the way things used to be.
When the following essay was published in December 2011, Tim Tebow was (by far) the best-known, most polarizing athlete in America. By the time this book is released, many people will not even remember who he was or what he did, unless they really care about God or Florida or minor league baseball. That entire evolution happened in less than five years. It’s starting to feel like Tebow’s lasting cultural imprint will be small, unless he runs for Congress (which, I must concede, feels inevitable).
So—just in case—here is who this guy was: He was the best college quarterback of the modern era (one Heisman Trophy, two national titles). He was a bad NFL quarterback, even though he won more games than he lost. He’s an openly religious person who’s heavily involved with philanthropy. He built a children’s hospital in the Philippines. As a college senior at Florida, when asked at a press conference if he was a virgin, he laughed and said, “Yes I am.” He starred (alongside his mother) in an anti-abortion commercial that ran during the Super Bowl. He is the only football player in history who became famous for genuflecting in public (Colin Kaepernick doesn’t count—he got famous for kneeling, which isn’t the same). Half the people who watched him play loved him a little too much. The other half hated him too much.
Some people exist only for the benefit of strangers.
The Light Who Has Lighted the World
If you’ve lost interest in thinking about Tim Tebow, don’t read the rest of this article. It will only make you mad. But then again, that might be what you want.
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I’VE JUST WATCHED the Denver Broncos defeat the Minnesota Vikings 35–32. Tebow was awful in the first half, passing for only 13 yards. He was relatively decent in the second half, finishing 10 of 15 for the game and completing three passes of more than 20 yards, a minor achievement he hadn’t accomplished all year. The Broncos won by intercepting a pass in the final minute and kicking an easy field goal, so it would be misleading and reactionary and inaccurate to say that Tebow won them the game. But Tebow won them the game.
When the score was deadlocked at 32 and the Broncos were kicking off with 1:33 remaining, Fox idiotically broke away from the tie in Minneapolis to show us the opening kickoff of the Giants–Packers game. Since I couldn’t see what was transpiring in Minnesota, I just had to sit in my chair and wonder what would happen next. Did I believe Denver would win? I shouldn’t have. Minnesota was getting the ball with multiple time-outs. They’d been the better team for most of the afternoon. Viking QB Chris Ponder had outplayed Tebow and the best athlete on the field was Viking receiver Percy Harvin. The worst-case scenario for the Vikings should have been heading into overtime with a home-field advantage.
Yet I believed Denver would win.
My reasoning?
I had no reasoning. And I did not like how that felt, even though I’m trying to convince myself it felt good.
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IMAGINE YOU’RE A DETECTIVE, assigned to investigate a murder in an isolated community of a thousand people. There’s no motive for this crime and no one saw it happen. By the time you arrive, the body has already been cremated. There are no clues. There is no forensic evidence. You can’t find anything that sheds any light whatsoever on who committed this murder. But because there are only a thousand people in town, you have the opportunity to interview everyone who lives there. And that process generates a bizarre consensus: Almost eight hundred of the thousand citizens believe the murderer is a local man named Timothy.
Over and over again, you hear different versions of the same sentiment: “Timothy did it.” No one saw him do it, and no one can provide a framework for how he might have been successful. But 784 people are certain it was Timothy. A few interviewees provide sophisticated, nuanced theories as to why they’re so convinced of his guilt. Others simply say, “I can just tell it was him.” Most testimonies fall somewhere in between those extremes, but no one has any tangible proof. You knock on Timothy’s door and ask if you can talk to him about the crime. He agrees. He does not seem nervous or distraught. You ask what he was doing the evening of the murder. He says, “I was reading a book and watching a movie.” He shows you the book. You check the TV listings from the night of the murder, and the film he referenced had aired on television. You say, “Many people in this town think you are responsible for the killing.” Timothy says, “I have no idea why they would think that.” You ask if he knew the man who died. “Yes,” he replies, “I know everyone in town.” You ask if he disliked the victim. “I didn’t like him or dislike him,” he says. “I knew him. That was the extent of our relationship.”
After six months of investigating, you return to your home office. Your supervisor asks what you unearthed. “Nothing,” you say. “I have no evidence of anything. I did not find a single clue.” The supervisor is flummoxed. He asks, “Well, do you have any leads?” You say, “Sort of. For reasons I cannot comprehend, 784 of the citizens believe the killer is a man named Timothy. But that’s all they have—their belief that Timothy is guilty.”
“That seems meaningful,” says your supervisor. “In the face of no evidence, the fact that 78.4 percent of the town strongly believes something seems like our best prospect. We can’t arrest him, but we can’t ignore that level of accord. It’s beyond a coincidence. Let’s keep the case open. We should continue investigating this Timothy fellow, even if our only reason for suspicion is the suspicion of other people.”
Do you agree with your supervisor’s argument?
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A SURVEY by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life suggests that 78.4 percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians.
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I’m not interested in forwarding a pro-Tebow or anti-Tebow argument. I have my own feelings, but I don’t think they’re relevant. What I’m interested in is why he’s so fascinating to other people. I’ve spent the last two months traveling around the country, and Tebow was the only person I was asked about in every single city. I even had one debate over whether the degree to which Tebow is socially polarizing has been overrated by the media, a debate whose very existence seems to provide its own answer. I feel compelled to write about him, even while recognizing that too much has been written already.
The nature of sports lends itself to the polarization of celebrity athletes. But this case is unlike any other I can remember. In 1996, when Denver Nuggets guard Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf refused to face the flag during the national anthem, it was easy to understand why certain people were outraged and why others saw that outrage as hypocritical. It was predictably polarizing. But this “Tebow Thing” is different. On one pole, you have people who hate him because he’s too much of an in-your-face good person, which makes very little sense; at the other pole, you have people who love him because he succeeds at his job while being uniquely unskilled at its traditional requirements, which seems almost as weird. Equally bizarre is the way both groups perceive themselves as the oppressed minority who are fighting against dominant public opinion, although I suppose that has become the way most Americans think about everything.
Clearly, religion plays a role in this (we live in a Christian nation, Tebow is a Christian warrior, non-Christians see themselves as ostracized, and Christians see themselves as persecuted). But the real reason this “Tebow Thing” feels new is because it’s a God issue that transcends God, assuming it’s possible for any issue to transcend what’s already transcendent. I’m starting to think it has something to do with the natural human discomfort with faith—and not just faith in Christ, but faith in anything that might (eventually) make us look ridiculous.
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JUST BECAUSE A BUNCH of people believe something does not make it true. This is obvious, even to a child. People once thought the earth was flat.13 But here’s a more complex scenario: If you were living in Greece during the sixth century, and there was no way to deduce what the true shape of the earth was, and there was no way to validate or contradict the preexisting, relatively universal belief that the world was shaped like a flat disc—wouldn’t disagreeing with that theory be less reasonable than refuting it? And if so, wouldn’t that mean the only sixth-century people who were ultimately correct about world geography were unreasonable and insane?
Trust the insane!
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TEBOW IS A FAITHFUL PERSON. He’s full of faith—filled to the top and oozing over the side. It’s central to every part of him. When a reporter suggested that he mentions God too frequently (and that this repetition is what annoys his critics), Tebow said, “If you’re married, and you really love your wife, is it good enough to only tell your wife that you love her on the day you get married? Or should you tell her every single day when you wake up and have the opportunity? That’s how I feel about my relationship with Jesus Christ.” This is the smartest retort I’ve ever heard an athlete give to a theological question. What possible follow-up could the reporter have asked that would not have seemed anti-wife?
