Author: Graeme McMillan

I’ve been thinking recently about secondhand nostalgia. It’s a weird concept that I’m having trouble articulating properly, but essentially it comes down to feeling a surprising nostalgia for things that you weren’t really present for in the first place, and have no firsthand knowledge of.

This comes from re-reading a comic from the mid-1970s the other day, and realizing that there’s something very powerful to me not only about the story in the comic — which, I hasten to add, is not a particularly good story — but the ephemera surrounding it; the ads, the editorial material, and even the graphic design of the entire package.

The thing is, I wasn’t reading comics when this particular comic came out; I wasn’t even reading when it was published. I was just two years old, and I lived in a different country altogether, so the idea that I passively picked up some of the visual cues from somewhere else in my life at the time. (If nothing else, I’m not sure two-year-olds really notice a lot of graphic design in the first place, especially not passively; I could be wrong, though.)

It’s possible that I’m actually nostalgic for the situation in which I first read said comic — which, in this case, was finding it amongst a pile of comics in a used bookstore in Glasgow’s West End, during a Christmas break from high school, and being thrilled that it was so goofy and so affordable, all of which feels like something that I really have every right to be nostalgic about, to be honest — but I really don’t think that’s it. My affection, my feeling of time-gone-by enniu, is specifically tied to the mid-1970s, and the circumstances it first appeared in, despite my inability to have any claim to that in any legitimate sense.

Is it entirely imagined, then? Am I over-romanticizing something that I’m just making up in my head? Perhaps — but it feels real, nonetheless, this silly affection for a time and a place I never was.

The most surprising thing about Saturday’s call that Joe Biden had won the election wasn’t really the actual call, of course; after that first 24 hours or so, it had been becoming slowly but convincingly clear that Biden was more than likely going to take it barring any kind of over-the-top shenanigans on the part of the Trump campaign and administration. Which isn’t to suggest that there was no chance that such shenanigans would take place — one only has to look at what has been happening in Trump world over the last few months, and increasingly over the last week or so, to see that shenanigans are definitely on the menu over there.

But still; by Friday, it felt as if there would be little way to overcome Biden’s lead without it being something that would be both all-too-obviously a cheat and roundly rejected by the country as a whole. His victory seemed more or less in the bag; it was just a question of when, not if.

The surprise, then, was watching everyone’s reactions to it. Perhaps I’m too cynical and jaded, but I didn’t expect spontaneous public parties across the country, never mind across the world. I didn’t expect to spend hours on social media, just scrolling and looking at the relief and joy of people who realized that their very existences weren’t going to be actively legislated against anymore. (Yes, Biden and Harris are, to be polite, imperfect options; they’re also a hell of a lot better than Trump and Pence, and the weird “what about”-ism that’s argued otherwise from both sides of the spectrum has been gross and sickening for the last few months.)

I wasn’t alone, either; the feeling of recognition as people continually came up with counterpoints to the term “doomscrolling” to explain their inability to stop looking at other people’s relief and pleasure. (“Dreamscrolling” was my favorite, although “joyscrolling” was more popular.)

More surprising than anything, though, was the feeling of hope that came from watching everyone’s response. More so than the win itself, watching the reaction to it made me hopeful that we’re headed on the right track, after years of it feeling the very opposite. And, even more hopefully, that we’re ready to do the work that needs to be done, at least in part.

When I first moved to the U.S., I didn’t have a green card. As a result, I spent a lot of time wandering around the neighborhood that I’d just moved into, purposefully not doing anything that would cost any money, because I didn’t really have any money; I had, after all, just moved to the U.S. and didn’t have a job yet.

I also found myself spending an extraordinary time watching daytime television, because what else was I supposed to be doing? (I mean, yes, there was that whole “getting the green card sorted out” thing, as well as the various other immigration shenanigans, meetings and requirements; I was doing both of those as well, don’t worry.) As a result, I am left as someone in the year 2020 with an entirely irrational nostalgic attachment to “Cleveland Rocks,” as performed by the Presidents of the United States of America, also known as the theme music to The Drew Carey Show.

It’s not that I really loved The Drew Carey Show — honestly, at this point, I can barely remember it beyond the vague shape and the fact that Craig Ferguson played an uptight boss, in what felt like kind of counter-programming considering Ferguson’s own personality. But that theme music…! I would try my hardest to be in front of the television just to catch the theme every afternoon when it played. I couldn’t explain why at the time.

I can’t explain it now, either; there was something about the way that it built that won me over every single time the guitar started — something about the line “Living in sin with a safety pin,” too, for some strange reason, the connection between the two things that felt as if they should be contradictory, or at least disconnected, as if it were some kind of magical spell.

There was something unfamiliar but inviting about it, and the fact that it repeated daily and was one constant in a time where there were few constants made it even more inviting and appealing; so much so that, more than a decade later, the song drifts back to me in memory and I feel such a surprising connection to a time I hadn’t thought about in a long, long time.