“Nostalfuture”
- The sweet, anticipatory ache for moments I have not yet lived
I recently watched Wong Kar-wai’s 2046, a movie soaked in memory and refusal to acknowledge that nothing lasts forever. It showes our deep desire to relive the pleasurable past, ironically expected to take place into the “future” in this spesicfic movie. The protagonist travels back (into the future), emotionally and narratively, always reaching for something irretrievable. It’s a stunning masterpiece of a movie (!) and tragic (and please dont get me wrong, I don’t subscribe to happy endings, that is not my point). The tragic is that we humans often reach back as if we’ve begun to fear that the best has already happened, as if the future holds nothing as tender or golden as what we’ve already survived. Sure, the past feels safe, it’s already over, no suspense or intolerable tension of the unknown. But our culture seems to cling to the past like a familiar lullaby, some sort of comfort. Nostalgia is everywhere from the return of vintage styles, endless remakes of songs or movies, filtered photos meant to resemble decades we barely knew, or even worse “borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered eighties” as LSD soundsystem frustratingly expresses.
After watching Wong Kar-wai’s 2046, I expected to feel wistful for my own past. But something else stirred me. A sense of longing, or a pull forward, towards my imagined future — the moments I’ve not yet lived. Not a repetition of the old, but the possibility of something entirely new. This is what I call nostalfuture.
While 2046 lingers in the sorrow of what can’t be reclaimed, nostalfuture dreams of what could still be. In contrast to nostalgia’s looping comfort, nostalfuture is laced with uncertainty and thrill. It’s openness that allows the unknown to seduce. I want to lean forward to an unknown — I romanticize potential, not memory. The humming with becoming, a fantasy about a life not yet lived.
In the book “Before the Coffee Gets Cold”, Toshikazu Kawaguchi writes about a small and hidden café in Tokyo, where the customers are allowed to travel back in time, but only under strict rules. They must remain in the café, they can’t change the present, and they must return before the coffee gets cold. The novel explores themes of love, regret, longing and the small, tender moments that shape our lives. In the café customers travel to the past, but nothing they do will ever change the present. This evokes a sense of resigned nostalgia, the longing to revisit, not to revise. One character travels back just to see someone again even thou they know it won’t alter the present or future. It shows how we sometimes crave the feeling of a moment, rather than to influence its consequences.
When we repeat our daily routines, are they simply efforts to relive the past and experience the safety of the known? And what happens when we change our routines, walk a different route, buy our coffee somewhere else? These are potential little suspenseful moments that increase our chances of unexpected encounters and conversations — a flyer in a window, a new place that feels just right, follow some hunch that might end in delight.
For me, nostalgia sometimes resembles a sugarcoated depression, a block in energy. We know that novelty stimulates the brain, even a different environment just for a few minutes can lead to new thoughts, ideas or solutions that wouldn’t arise in routine. If you’re stuck in rumination or worry, even a small detour can interrupt the loop.
Don´t get me wrong, I also have the hang to some nostalgic detour through a song from my teenage years of rebellion or remembering the “first cut is the deepest”. But, I also feel nurtured when I hear a new song and imagine hot summer nights dancing with people I haven’t yet met, but who I might fall in love with. I’m afraid we cultivate looking back, so much that we miss the present, miss out on new relationships by idealizing our blast from the past. An uncomfortable comfort zone, where we get stuck in the known, but nothing new happens — and we get passive with desire (as the Choir Boy sings) — a sort of “acquired defensive taste”, to protect us from the hurt of the yet unknown.
