Do you Remember it All Too Well? What a Priest and Artist could Teach Pop Singers about Nostalgia

In their dialogue “The Meaning of Birth” Fr. Guissani and Giovanni Testori say “man does not kill himself from absence; he kills himself from nostalgia.” The priest and the artist spend their dialogue discussing modern angst, especially among young people. Instead of dismissing pop culture, they engage it and seek to understand its emotions and the tensions within it.

It’s this pain–the ache of unresolved nostalgia–that Taylor Swift expresses in one of her most famous songs, “All Too Well.” Unlike some of her other break-up songs, it’s not vengeful or dismissive. It’s about the deep, universal desire for home.

“Nostalgia” comes from “nostos” –the Greek word for “home.” Anyone who’s experienced it knows that nostalgia is different than just remembering something–it’s not recalling a fact, it’s a sort of internal stirring that pulls us to a different place.

The song’s first line captures it “I walked through the door with you, the air was cold / but something about it felt like home somehow.” She remembers “autumn leaves falling like pieces into place” –the sense of rightness and belonging that comes when you’re someplace that feels like home. Somewhere where you feel totally present, safe, and understood.

Fr. Guissani and Testori explore the connection between childhood and nostalgia, which the song also captures–“your mother’s telling stories ‘bout you on the t-ball team / you told me ‘bout your past, thinking your future was me.” Childhood is supposed to be the place where we first experience that sense of home. When we grow up and naturally leave our parents, we look for a home in other people.

Yes, “All Too Well” is a melodramatic ballad of a girl who jumped into love too quickly and fell for the wrong man. But the song’s popularity shows that it’s struck a cultural chord worth understanding. Unresolved and overpowering nostalgia can be a prison, but perhaps to remember too much (and be prompted to heal) is better than to not remember at all. What Fr. Guissani and Testori challenge the culture to do is to reorient memory towards the truth. That means affirming truth even when it shows up in a Taylor Swift album.

The truth is that our hearts are made for union with others. The Miley Cyrus option in “Flowers” (which won a Grammy) is much worse — “started to cry and then remembered … I can buy myself flowers … I can talk to myself for hours … I can hold my own hand.” That’s a lie–a false memory. We are not designed to get as much satisfaction from talking to ourselves as talking to each other and holding your own hand is not the same as holding someone else’s.

Fr Guissani and Testori discourage this kind of calloused response to sadness. They explain that it’s not bad to sit for a bit in the melancholy because tears help us clean out the anger and frustration and wounded pride so that we can acknowledge the actual reason for our sadness. Mourning a lost home, final chapter, or broken trust is to affirm that we were created to be in communion, to live in eternity, and to be at peace with others. We weren’t created to be alone.

It’s good to mourn what we lose. But we can’t sit forever in nostalgia and experience Swift’s line, “Time won’t fly, it’s like I’m paralyzed by it.” The solution isn’t to “Shake it Off” or repress emotion. Our challenge is to reorient our memory and see the nostalgia as a signpost of eternity. Even the best human relationships are only samples of the ultimate union we’re created for.

Embracing the bittersweet ache of nostalgia affirms that we are, as C.S Lewis said, “created for another world.” Suffering pushes us to dependence–to our identity as children of God (11) in whom we “live and move and have our being.” Where so much pop music like “Flowers” goes wrong–and the direction Taylor Swift went in later albums–is to try and avoid suffering by repressing the nostalgia that causes it (or tinting it with bitterness). Instead of acknowledging the desire for home, we assert our independence–that we can satisfy ourselves. Memories have to be redeemed and healed, but knowledge of hope only comes through the awareness of pain. And if we want to help others who are paralyzed by nostalgia, we may have to keep the scarf in our drawer and remember it all too well.