Nostalgia soundtrack

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He always started his set with Mulatu Astatke.

No matter the night, the crowd, or how many people were actually paying attention. That slow, confident swing of Ethiopian jazz was his ritual, his anchor.

“Because it reminds me of when music had patience, when people did too,” he said, when I asked him why always Mulatu.

The way he said it made the room feel older for a second, “Oh, you’re one of the old ones who romanticize nostalgia,” I teased.

He laughed, shaking his head as he adjusted the mixer.

“It’s not romanticizing,” he said. “It’s remembering.”

“Remembering,” I repeated, raising an eyebrow. “Or idealizing the past?”

He paused, letting the horn line drift between us.

“Maybe both,” he admitted. “But tell me what’s wrong with polishing the memories a bit. They’re the only things that don’t argue back.”

I shot him a half-smile.“So you admit it — you’re editing your own history.”

“Of course I am,” he said. “Everyone does. Nostalgia isn’t about accuracy. It’s about feeling something you don’t want to lose.”

I left him the Negroni, went back to my station, and thought about nostalgia.

Maybe he’s right — maybe it is a reminder that what’s gone isn’t lost.

That nostalgia isn’t really about the past at all, but about a version of yourself you get to step back into for a minute.Not to stay there — just to remember who you were, and how far you’ve wandered since.

Everyone is nostalgic for a different reason: some miss people, some miss smells, and others miss themselves. Sometimes feels like a recognition of the feeling you carried with you the whole time, even if it changed shape a hundred times along the way. And most of the time, it's funny, half the things I call “nostalgia” are really just excuses — like why I refuse to delete blurry old photos, or why I still defend my questionable early-2000s haircut, or why I’m convinced the first iPod was the peak of human engineering.

Near closing, I walked back to him with two Negronis in hand,

“Since we’re both rewriting history tonight,” I said, “let’s have another Negroni.”

“Why is it always a Negroni with you?” he asked.

“Every time I have one, I remember things better than they ever were.”

He laughed softly.

“Idealizing the past, right?” he said. “You said it, not me.”

He raised his glass. “Yeah. Our brains are giving old stories a better ending. Someone has to.”

He pulled the vinyl from his stack and dropped the needle — Tezeta, one more time, and he said “tezeta” means remembrance, or that bittersweet yearning you feel for something you can’t fully name.