A Rallying Cry to Shake Off Artistic Entropy

Songs resonate differently when years have passed since your last listen. What’s inspiring me to write this is my sudden desire to listen to Death Cab for Cutie’s ‘Codes and Keys’ album, which I played on repeat when it was released in 2011 but haven’t revisited much since. 2011 was a great year for me — I was newly engaged to my husband and close to graduating from college. I was also making plans to move from Kelowna, British Columbia, to the province’s capital city, Victoria. It was a time of excitement but also uncertainty.

Perhaps I find myself drawn to this album once again because, after over a decade in Victoria and a decade of marriage, my husband and I have made another major change, relocating to the outskirts of Calgary, Alberta. For anyone familiar with these cities, you know that they couldn’t be more different, and that’s precisely what I’ve been craving. Some individuals have criticized me for this move, even making unwarranted assumptions about my political views (but my annoyances with west coast politics are a topic for another article). I don’t want to carry the baggage of BC to Alberta; I want the freshness, the thrill of the unknown, and the challenge of stepping out of my comfort zone.

So, it makes sense to be drawn to music that reminds me of a time when I last felt that exciting-yet-scary feeling of the unknown. However, I can’t help but feel slightly trapped by the nostalgia of it all. It feels inescapable. My art, my writing, even the aesthetics in my films, they all draw from the past. Everything I have ever shot embraces 80s new wave vibes, 90s fashion, or the cheesy humor of 2000s comedies. No matter how hard I try, I find myself drawing on inspiration from the past rather than what is around me. It’s not just me, though; our entire society feels trapped by the warm, weighted blanket of nostalgia. For example, fashion and music trends all seem to follow a five-year cycle of the 70s being trendy, followed by the 80s, the 90s, the early 2000s, and then back again. If you listen closely, most modern pop songs are heavily inspired by disco, and peasant tops are everywhere (and yet despite this, the organ hasn’t made a comeback ala pop music in the 60s).

Why is it such a struggle to create or listen to something genuinely new? I am happy and living what many would consider to be an enviable life, and yet I can’t imagine a future that is better than how we imagined the world would be pre-9/11. I don’t want to believe that society peaked thirty years ago — I want to believe that the world can be better, even if entertaining the idea of actively making the future brighter feels exhausting, like one more thing to add to our already full plates.

Even blind people can see that the Western world isn’t faring better now than it was in the ’90s or the early 2000s. It is clear that we’re in a state of entropy. But we must hold onto hope — we need to believe that things can improve, that society can re-energize, and that inspiration can once again come from the world around us, rather than solely relying on nostalgic media. I can’t speak for everyone (obviously), but too many people seem confined by the comforting embrace of nostalgia and are too apprehensive or exhausted to pursue something new. Sure, the world is grappling with… a lot. And I can think of at least three current conflicts that could lead to World War 3. However, it’s worth noting that the arts have often thrived during much more challenging times. The Renaissance, for example, happened after the Black Death, and movements like Dadaism and Surrealism emerged around the time of the first World War. World War 2 also led to a significant surge in consumerism, a factor I would argue contributed to the development of Pop Art (though comparing Pop Art to works from the Renaissance may seem audacious 😉). It feels like something happened in the 2010s that put a damper on the creative consciousness of the Western world, as if society collectively experienced a creative burnout around the same time.

Same, same.

Perhaps if we all openly discussed what we hope for (in life, and artistically), things could improve? What if we all embraced vulnerability and put our collective cards on the table and said exactly what we wanted to see change? Or we could all go balls to the wall and create the weirdest and most nonsensical things we can imagine! Could that kickstart a creative revolution? It’s worth a shot. Even if you’re not yet ready to create, reflecting on what draws us to our old favorites is a starting point. We don’t need to completely abandon the comforts of the warm blanket of nostalgia, but we do need to understand why we’re drawn to stay in that familiar bed. We should want joy and hope for the future, damn it! If Hollywood isn’t inspiring the masses, then it’s up to us as individual artists to take the initiative.

Sure, many things have changed socially since 2011, but that shouldn’t be a reason for our culture to lose its artistic soul. We ALL possess the capability to reshape the cultural storyline and to build a world that we are excited to participate in, if only we try. Entropy doesn’t need to be inevitable.