What becomes of Pop Culture in the Age of Nostalgia?

It's no secret that nostalgia is a feeling exclusive to old people. The more time that passes, the harder it becomes to resist. Children don't waste their time reminiscing on yesteryear, they can't wait to grow up. Adolescents don't hold on to relics from their past, they shed them in order to grab hold of the new flavor of the week. But somewhere in  your early thirties you begin feel yourself aging out of the pop culture demographic that panders to hormonal teens and naïve twenty-somethings.

I find that in my thirties, I enjoy music simply based on composition. The deftness of the lyrics are hardly on trial. No string of words could reverberate now as they did in those lovelorn days of my youth. It's difficult to just ingest a new TV show or movie as an independent experience. With countless hours of media logged, my brain quickly indexes and pulls out previous works as basis of comparison. Everything is a remix. 

Although my age begins to taint all things new, I can still find some correction by resisting to look at my past through rose colored glasses. Any past life can look idyllic if you cherry pick it but the present is constantly streaming in unfiltered. You get the good with the bad, same as you always have.

I know that as my motor skills wane, it will become an increasingly arduous task dropping each new flavor of the week to reach out for another. Soon the flavor of the week will become flavor of the month, year, decade, on infinitum. Accepting to feel nostalgia is like submitting to the soothing sounds of a mermaid's siren song. It's enchanting melody purposely crafted to lure you out of the fog and shipwreck you on some god forsaken island, to grow old, die, and be forgotten. In order to stay youthful, you have to reject nostalgia. You have to reject your youth.