On Nostalgia and Creative Lethargy

I recently caught up with a fellow creative friend on a Zoom call. We were updating each other on the projects we’ve got going and lamenting the state of the world, and agreed that it’s been difficult to muster the creative energy to keep our personal projects going.

He dubbed the problem ‘creative lethargy’, and it perfectly describes how I’ve been feeling lately.

Between a full-time job, working with clients as Liz Feezor Creative, and a couple side projects that involve creative energy, I’ve just felt tapped out these days. And with a pandemic still going on and things more or less still locked down in Austin, it’s hard to change up my day-to-day.

I miss being able to write at the library or spend hours in coffee shops. Different surroundings help spark creativity, and it’s hard to not feel resentful when things feel monotonous.

David Lynch describes ideas as “gifts from consciousness elsewhere that should be loved, nourished, and cherished”, and encourages us to “make time and space for ideas to enter your world.” But without the opportunity for novelty—or the time and space for new ideas—how can we stay creatively motivated?

One of my creative side projects is AI, a musical duo with a synth-pop/rock bent to it. We’re working on a new track around the theme of nostalgia and the idea that mining the past for answers can be fun and painful at the same time.

The word ‘nostalgia’ derives from the Latin ‘nost-’ meaning ‘homecoming’, and ‘-algia’ meaning ‘pain’. When we use the word ‘nostalgia’ now, it has positive connotations of fondness for the past. But the word used to refer to an actual sickness: longing for home was an ailment that needed to be cured.

Working on this song got me thinking about my own relationship to nostalgia. This week marks 20 years since my freshman year of college, starting with marching band camp at Oregon. It’s a time in my life I’ll always love, but romanticizing the past sometimes holds us back. I’m guilty of holding onto memories, people, and ideas that may provide comfort, but don’t serve to move me forward.

But nostalgia can also be a good thing: if all art is theft as Austin Kleon claims, isn’t the past a great source of inspiration? Do we not examine history to understand current events?

I’m working on my own relationship with nostalgia. It’s a double-edged sword for me, because I remember the past so vividly that I can use memories as creative fuel, but it can come at the expense of my personal development.

Is nostalgia the antidote to creative lethargy right now? Perhaps. When the world seems bleak and uninspiring, memories are water in a creative desert.

But I can’t do things like watch old movies over and over or listen to the same music and expect to be creatively inspired. I have to remember to make room for the new; to actively seek and create fresh experiences, even when it seems like novelty is an impossibility.

Nostalgia is a drug best used in moderation: an overdose can be fatal to creativity.

(The image for this post is an official band photo for AI, taken by Chris Owen. Follow AI on Spotify and Instagram: we’re making new music during the pandemic, so stay tuned!)