By some random mnemonic trigger, I recalled this noise-rock band from the '80s and early '90s; so, aiming my curiosity at YouTube, I found some footage from the band's reunion show in 2012. I was disturbed to find the vocalist looking old and fat, dressed in trashy transvestite garb. It seemed not only embarrassing for a middle-aged man to be pulling what had been a juvenile stunt when he was a young man, but also anachronistic for its being an '80s-era kind of thing to do. But the audience seemed to like it, so whatever.
Coincidentally, I'd been reflecting upon alternabands of yesteryear reuniting for shows and tours, and how they seems like soldiers who'd fought in the Civil War now hired as Civil War-reenactment players for the authentrified amusement of tourists. These reunion gigs are as popular as their original audiences' desire to feel young again is strong. For me, however, being seduced or induced into the mindset that I'd had in my 20s and early 30s could not appeal to me less, and there is absolutely no band that was around during that time whose reunion gig I'd like to attend. Were I to attend one, I'd expect to look at the crowd around me and see people, whose kids are grown-up, flush with the "feels" of when that music had scored their cinematic youths, indulging in the way they want to remember their lives. I myself would feel as though I were betraying all the effort that I'd put into going through so much and coming out of it alive. Besides, I can't exactly feel nostalgic for what a jackass I'd been as a young adult; not even if people were to forgive me for having been that jackass. Their approbation, ironically, is now contingent upon my acquiescing to their expectations, resembling for their sake the person whom I'd tried so hard not to be anymore.
The further I drift from the era when that music was new and hip, the more it sounds "of" that time and irrelevant to the present, belonging to an era which seems incongruous to how the world is now. This is music that originated from before hardly anyone had an e-mail account, and long before you'd had to watch a band from the screen of the smartphone blocking your real, live view of the stage – and it sounds like it. Although I myself should like to return to the mid-'90s, I know too well that it ain't gonna happen, and I'll furtively revisit that era on my own time and at my own expense or risk. My only demonstrable holdover from the mid-'90s is my enduring enjoyment of the music of Oasis – whom I'm glad will never reunite. If they would, it would ruin my discrete personal nostalgic indulgence. Don't mess with the way I want to remember my life.