Sunday, August 02, 2009
N is for Nostalgia
This is a week of Nostalgia.
Oweek started. Seeing everything - the ocomm briefings, the preparation of programmes, the actual campers, the similiar games played, some same people etc - reminded me of this time last year, and I find it hard to recapture that level of enthusiasm and energy I had for the camps (and FOP in general), that determination to make everything work, that level of mental-alertness to pro-actively foresee and solve every possible problem. And of course, the company - our ocomm was a superbly small but determined and fun comm - and personally, I feel better when I'm empowered to change and make things good, rather more as a bystander.
Sir Bobby Robson died. It seldom occured to me that he had much of an impression on me, but when the news of his passing, you just can feel that the whole football world will get into mourning. Fans of any club, people have few bad words and lots of good words to say about him. Seriously, I didn't grow up when he is in his prime, only when he was Newcastle's manager. But it's the feeling he gives football - the gentlemanly and passionate nature of his, it was just infectious.
I watched Moonwalker today. Weirdly, some of my friends did watch it when they are young, while I have totally no memory of it. When the movie first flashed in, with his performance in concerts (it was like a cult and many girls fainted), strangely, tears began to form at my eyes. I was sighing on how that passionate (he is really really passionate when he performs, it is as if he really had something deep inside to tell people) and incredibly charismatic and talented performer was reduced to the frail weird man we see in his later years, and of course, that image of him being on life-support as he was wheeled out of the ambulance. He was really a brilliant performer, no doubt about that. And of course, in some of his songs, it was evident that there were strong 'peace' messages. The 'movie' wasn't fantastic at all - the middle part and the 'storyline' was really quite lame - but it's my own personal tribute to him, and seeing those old images on the big screen with nice speakers blasting the music makes it worthwhile for me. The more brilliant he was, the more 'sigh' i felt in my mind.
And of course, the 'small matter' that Michael Schumacher is coming back to F1. Having grown up thinking that F1 is a serious waste of petrol (and not watching anything except cars zooming pass), I have missed his brilliant career, when he ruled the tracks. This is my (and perhaps the world's) last chance to see him race, and I'm not gonna miss it.
This brought me to the conversation with Camy about the 'evilness' of time. Yeah, time indeed has brought us an inevitable tide that keeps pushing us 'forward' into a changing world, where the things we knew to be 'current' slowly become obsolete, things we know so deeply slowly becoming 'old-fashioned' and out-of-time. Of course, and time pass on, more footballing personnels' gonna die, more artistes whom we grew up with will slowly retire (and die off some day).. nostalgia nostalgia.
The arts spirit - where one generation will pass down that spirit to another, forming the undying flow. This oweek, I'm doing my part as perpetuator of that spirit, by passing on whatever experience I can. This MC had it tough, without many seniors to guide them in many things they do. Instead of blindly criticising, I'm doing my part to make things better. Too many people 'letting go', and not passing down that knowledge and spirit down. I'll do it my way, by trying my best to give a responsible handover. Once it is done, it is down to the current batch to do the same to the next.
Time passes too fast - sometimes, I just hope that things would stay the same forever, making me comfortable knowing what I always knew. The constant need to keep up with the times is tiring, and the passing on of previously-familiar things is scary. I need some more time to rest, some more time to re-organise my thoughts.
lowtide blogged @
2:10 am
