A Nostalgic Return to the Past.

Today- A visit to the State Library’s latest exhibition “ Look! The Art of Australian Picture Books today”. A marvellous display of original artwork- sketches, drawings, paintings and collages by several of Australia’s most talented illustrators of children’s picture books. Although unfamiliar with most of them, the meticulous detail that had gone into creating images which would resonate with children and parents alike was marvelous, as I was simultaneously swept by memories of my own childhood. The nights spent sitting on the stairs in the family home, as I was read the beautifully illustrated picture books of Enid Blyton or Beatrix Potter are memories I will cherish forever, and for which such exhibits will always evoke a nostalgia for times past.Pondering our inherent desire to hold on to our past through the collection of materialistically invaluable objects- cards, toys, books, paintings (as though without these we are unable to capture the “authentic experience”, I was reminded of Susan Stewart’s article On Longing (1993) (133). The souvenir, she argues, is precisely such object. An object which encapsulates the nostalgic desire for these moments as they become increasingly distanced from the realm of lived experience (133). This transference of internal/lived experience relieves us of the fear of forgetting, whilst investing the object with both a surplus (and lack) of significance. A memory standing outside the self, it's value wholly dependent on the narrative we attribute to them (133). The narrative itself only significant to the individual(s) directly associated with the experience itself.A return visit to the family home is the epitomy of such nostalgia, an object/space which encapsulates these moments, distorting the gap between past and present. The conversations, the games, the cubbyhouses still feel real, as the ornaments, toy boxes, and furniture remain to tell the tale. A metanarrative in which memories/narratives themselves are recreated in a simultaneous (yet distant) moment in time. There is a magic about this, an exclusivity to its inhabitants, which can be perpetually recalled, Christmas being a particulary special time for this. Each year, the tree is decorated with the same ornaments, many of which were hand made during primary school. The Santa made from a toilet roll, the fairy from a stocking filled with cotton wool, generate laughter and memories each year they are reassembled.The scrap book, the toys, the decorations- this partial reconstruction of childhood can never be our “childhood as lived; it is a childhood voluntarily remembered, a childhood manufactured from its material survivals” and yet, as Stewart points out, it is here that their charm resides (145). 'If we [were] to achieve our desire of closing the gap between past and present, lived experience would have to take place. An experience which would erase the gap between signifier and signified, which in turn would cancel out the desire that is nostalgia’s reason for existence' (141). We feel an emptyness without these objects which have become an external part of us, the part we have lost forever, a loss without which there would be no significance or memorable past.Ironically, as invaluable as these items may be, their locale is often commensurate with their material worthlessness (151-151). Hidden away from engagement of everyday life, the majority of them are gathering dust, whilst providing peace of mind that they still exist. The temporality of the past, scrambled into a simultaneous moment the mind is invited to rearrange, our childhood memories remain. Their tragedy being 'the death of memory', just as 'the tragedy of all autobiography the erasure of the autograph' and which we all struggle to resist.