I’m a lover of jazz and swing. It began back in my early teens while researching a project for school. I discovered Ella Fitzgerald’s dreamy rendition of Blue Moon and fell head over heels. Now, you can often find me relaxing with some Nat King Cole or Glen Miller while I’m doing work for HOL.
One thing that intrigues me when reading the comment sections for jazz compilations on Youtube is how many people say the music made them nostalgic for a time they’d never experienced. Some people even write entire, beautiful scenarios about slow dancing with the love of their life while the wireless plays. I can understand why. There is something very evocative and romantic about just how different the music is from what you might here today. The phenomena even has a special name: anemoia (longing for a time you’ve never known).
I’m certainly not immune to it – far from it. Picturing myself in an elegant dress, fox-trotting around a movie set makes my heart swell just like it does for many of the people who comment. I’m a writer. Elaborate Daydreams are my stock in trade.
But there’s also a certain level of guilt and self-consciousness attached too. Because I know my romantic daydreams are just that. They don’t reflect the difficulties and struggles of the time I’m yearning for. When people wax lyrical about how times were simpler before they were born or I catch myself longing for a time before the internet, I have to shake my head. Because while I entirely understand the wish to leave behind all that’s wrong with our lives now, I’m pretty sure that those times would have felt far from simple to the people who really did live through them. So to say that I truly would like to exist back then rather than now? It’s a lie. A beautiful one but a lie, nonetheless.
Does this make Anemoia a bad thing? Absolutely not. I think it just means that it should be treated with caution. If I’m just indulging in a lush dreamscape of standing by the rail of a ship while an orchestra plays Moon River and the stars twinkle overhead, how could that possibly be bad? I just have to keep in mind Dumbledore’s words from Philosopher’s Stone ‘it does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live’.