Nostalgia Is Funny

I once heard it said, "Nostalgia isn't necessarily about missing the times when we were young because they were better, so much as about missing them simply because we were young." Something like this must be involved in the feelings I had about learning of Robin Gibbs' (of the BeeGees) death.

This particular nostalgia must reflect a longing for the lost sense of certainty that I was part of a "special" group. Yet now I recognize that this experience -- especially the part where I was forced out of the group -- did me emotional damage, as well as confining the scope of my intellect for many years thereafter.

Conversely, another tune's associations have improved for me through the same process. As I walked home from the meeting in which the chapter organizer first tried to persuade me to leave the group because of my tendency to think for myself (although he disguised this with a euphemism sufficient to keep me from seeing what I didn't want to see), the music that happened to be running through my head was the theme to the British TV series The Prisoner, which was on Channel 12 at the time. So for quite some time thereafter, this music had very negative associations for me. This now seems particularly ironic: although I didn't realize it then, leaving the YSA was the first step out of a prison.