But the second thing to know about nostalgia is that you can cheat time, but you can't beat it. Sooner or later we all go, without quite knowing it, from looking at the road ahead to seeing too much of it in the rearview mirror. So nostalgia as entertainment has its comfortably sappy place, but, in the end, it's a small one. Nostalgia that's not a click away - memories of your college-aged kids as toddlers, that famous family vacation to the Grand Canyon, mad jaunts in high school to hear music at long-since-closed Greenwich Village hotspots - that's stiffer stuff. I'm nostalgic about the Kinks and Animals, but more than anything, I'm nostalgic for the days when I didn't have so much to be nostalgic about.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT