Nostalgia
the heart clutching yearning of remembering who you used to be
Intuitive Drawing is a weekly newsletter about creative work and being human. As always, take what you need and leave the rest.
My friends,
Living behind my heartspace is nostalgia. That strange feeling, sometimes as eerie as déjà vu, but more often a quiet yearning, like unrequited love, for something you used to have. I imagine a baby’s hand squeezing my heart. It hurts, but it feels good too. The baby laughs at me, and squeezes, I chuckle awkwardly and try to decide if this is okay. What is this feeling of nostalgia? How can I articulate its alluring tug, and make sense of its dark evasiveness?
Nostalgia feels close to me at the end of a trip to the Bay Area. I lived there from 2002-2005 and attended the San Francisco Art Institute. I was 20 - 23 years old, and it was a formative time in my life. Aside from going to visit friends, I taught a class at my friend Holly’s marvelous new space, Speckle Studio. I got to see the mural I designed for her that was installed by local sign painter, Manny Fabregas.
I also came to see Belle and Sebastian play their first two albums live. It’s the 30th anniversary of Tigermilk and If You’re Feeling Sinister. Which means I’ve been listening to this band for 30 YEARS, and you guessed it, it made me feel nostalgic. I remember falling in love with Belle and Sebastian in 1996. I was in 9th grade. I spent as many hours as I was allowed on AOL, searching and chatting with music nerds. I would look for people who put indie rock band names in their profiles and send them a message. I liked to play a guessing game where one person would type out the initials of a band and the other would try to guess the band. You would never type GBV or MBV, because obviously everyone knew who that was, but you had to type out at least two letters. I had a “friend” like this who worked in a record store in Chapel Hill, they knew I loved TSAC and thought I might like this new band called Belle and Sebastian. A weird little artist like me? I ended up loving Belle and Sebastian, my whole soul wrapped around their first two albums and I can’t objectively unwind that experience from my heart clutching nostalgia.
*Guided By Voices, My Bloody Valentine, The Sea And Cake
Between the ages of 14 and 18 I listened to A LOT of Belle and Sebastian. My brain was still forming its neural connections, and this music became intertwined with complex feelings of yearning to belong. Although I still listen to both of these albums and consider them perfect albums (albums where every song is good and I want to listen to them from start to finish), I don’t listen to them often, or with the fervor I had as a teen. Seeing the show live, I didn’t expect to be bowled over by teenage, hormonal yearning for connection, brought to my knees by my weepy, nostalgia-sick heartspace, and able to sing every single word with every song.
As mentioned, I attended and graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute, which ceased to exist in 2023. When I heard they were closing I was living in Portland, and the idea of it felt very abstract to me. I briefly wondered if it meant my BFA was still valid—it is—and with that knowledge I shrugged my shoulders and moved on with my life. Despite having visited San Francisco many times since 2005, I don’t think I had visited my college since I graduated. I might have been too eager to move on, too dismissive of the past, and too focused on the future. I’ve kept in touch with some folks from college, but only loosely, connections grown dimmer with the passage of time. I didn’t think I felt a deep impact when the school closed, or particularly nostalgic about my time there.
Boy, was I wrong. Matt and I walked over to my school campus at 800 Chestnut Street and found the school was behind a chain link fence and under construction. My heartspace felt hot, water was at the edge of my eyes, and I experienced a deep, haggard yearning for something that would never return. Why I haven’t felt the need to return to the school where I earned a degree? I might have gone to eat a peanut butter bagel at the cafe. I might have visited Diego Rivera’s massive fresco, which covered one wall in a gallery where I once hung my own art. I might have wanted to walk through the library, and see if they still used the ancient card catalog system. But I never had the urge, I just wanted to see my friends, eat good food, and maybe see an art show. Perhaps I was ashamed that I wasn’t pursuing art the way I thought I might? Perhaps it was just in North Beach, and I didn’t want to hang out up there.
So many of my recollections from this time exist alone in my head. The archives and detritus that help solidify memories and reminders aren’t available. I lost my sketchbooks to Hurricane Katrina, held on to only a few poorly lit slides of my artwork, and occasionally see a piece of art from this time in an old friend’s home. These college-era memories are settled into the fabric of who I am as a person, but I don’t often dip into the pool of deep yearning that nostalgia provides.
I find myself wanting to tell you about my teachers, like I told you about AOL. I want to tell you about Charles Boone, my musical theory teacher who wore blazers and gray sweaters and played John Cage in the auditorium. He gave me his personal address after graduation and I wrote him postcards for a while. Tim Berry was my intaglio teacher, a wicked craftsman, who let me cut out tiny metal plates and arrange them like puzzles before pushing them through the press. Jon Rubin, from whom I took multiple classes in New Genres, orchestrated the Independent School Of Art. ISA was art school outside of art school, and we organized an installation of show and tell stories. I invited my friend Andrew to tell his story about Michael Jackson shopping at Amoeba after hours.
I want to get lost in these memories. I feel the pull of nostalgia. I end up searching Jon Rubin’s website for my name on the roster of ISA participants. I find out that Charles Boone is now 86 years old. I feel like I am contextualizing something about myself, I am storytelling about who I am, and I feel some sadness that I didn’t honor this earlier. Somehow I didn’t think my experiences were valuable enough to merit attention. Perhaps it was a sarcastic voice saying move on with your life, get something meaningful done already, make some money, perhaps it was simply that I did move on. Physically, I moved far away, and my connections to this part of my life slowly eroded over time.
My friend Teeny and I are curating an art show called Nostalgia Potluck at The Purple Door Gallery in Portland, Oregon. The opening is Friday, July 10th, you are invited. There will be over 30 artists exploring the themes of nostalgia, some playful and some dark.
Nostalgia is hitting, not just for me, but for many folks I talk to. I wonder if it is reaching middle age, my kid growing up, or the seemingly terrible trajectory of mankind. My friend Ryan pointed out that nostalgia might be a useful response to 2026.
I’m aching for a school I’ll never go to and a teenager I’ll never be again. These experiences are done, and honestly I wouldn’t want to relive them. But something in the ache feels good, it is some part of who I was and touching that place reminds me who I am.
Wherever you are this week, I hope the yearning is tender, and you can find places to make peace with the past and feel curious about the future.
Until next week, much love, Lettie Jane
Tidbits
If you missed it last week, I am here again to tell you that Sanae Yamada has a new album out!!!!! If you like LINE TIME, you will love to listen to Sanae play alone, without my voiceover.
I read When We’re Born We Forget Everything by Alicia Jo Rabbins, who is a friend. It’s a lovely memoir about finding spirituality through Jewish faith and balancing that against being a feminist, a punk, and a musician.
I love Ali Liebegott’s book The Summer Of Dead Birds. It’s a poetic journey through loss and heartbreak, with a sense of humor. I love Ali’s writing SO MUCH.
I read The Practice Of Attention: Cultivating Presence In A Distracted World by Cody Cook-Parrott. My favorite parts of this book were my favorite parts of all of Cody’s writing: when they share about their personal life and narrative. As a long time reader of Cody’s newsletter they inspire me to share more personal stories about myself, when otherwise I might think Lettie Jane, who needs to hear you wax poetic about AOL chatrooms? Yet again and again the moments of Cody’s life that sit with me are things like them painting their kitchen yellow, or paying down a six figure tax debt. Their recommendations for digital detoxes and attention audits feel like things I’m already deep in the process of, but I loved reading about cultivating hobbies as a form of regaining our attention.
I liked this article about teaching your children emotional intelligence:
Happy Birthday To… (Artist of the Week)
Wangechi Mutu was born on June 22, 1972.
I think there is something about countries and nations that is hard to define. And, in fact, that's probably why we create such massive boundaries - because it's so slippery where they begin and where they end. - Wangechi Mutu
I’ve always loved the idea that you think you know what you’re looking at from a distance, yet when you come up close, it gets intricate and nutty and obscene and provocative. - Wangechi Mutu
Summer Classes
Adult Summer Art Camp - Session 2 Monday - Friday, July 6th - July 10th
Adult Summer Art Camp - Session 3 Monday - Friday, August 3rd - August 7th
Intuitive Drawing (Saturday AM) Sept/Oct Saturdays, September 5th - October 3rd (5 weeks) 10:00am – 1:00pm
Deeper Drawing (Saturday afternoons) Sept-Oct Saturdays, September 5th - October 3rd (5 classes) 1:30pm – 4:30pm
Etc.
June book club is coming up!!! Monday, June 22nd, do the book as a workbook or just read it through, there is no wrong way to participate. Making Comics by Lynda Barry
July book club: Art On My Mind by bell hooks
August book club: Walk Through Walls: A Memoir by Marina Abramović
LINE TIME is a tiny recorded class whenever you need it.
Ways to Bring My Work Into Your Home
The Bun Update has been behind a paywall, so I can reward you kind folks who send money my way. This week I lifted the paywall for a very special Bun Update.
Matt and I attended San Francisco’s very own Bunny Cafe. This space has a sweet little shop in the front where you can get milk teas, vegan treats, and bunny merch. In the back is… hold on now… A BUNNY ROOM.
Yes, what everyone in our family has always wanted, a room partitioned into 8 little pens with 9 bunnies who are looking for their forever homes. This place has been open since January and they told us they’ve already found homes for over 100 bun buns. It’s easy to see why, these ridiculous cute, unbearably soft, business buns, are so well socialized they will not only deign to receive pets, but some of them will jump right into your lap!
My favorite bun was little adorable little guy WHO ONLY HAS 3 LEGS, and they called Ihop. He was transcendently beautiful. Matt loved the small black bunny called Jayquellen, and the tiny, baby Dutch rabbit they named Fairy Poppins.
Man Lettie! You're a mind reader!! I think about Nostalgia all the time in the sense of longing for something that I am unclear ever really existed. I am also thinking about our collective memory as we approach 250 years as a work in progress nation too...
I just finished reading Just Kids by Patti Smith. While she and Robert Mapplethorpe are older than my generation, it brought up the nostalgia of being 20 something, trying to make ends meet and find meaningful work, while also trying to make sense of the world and its injustices…. I yearned for those times and had some honest to goodness regret about not prioritizing art at that time in my life the way they did. It also gave me inspiration to do it now…