Culture and connection

I have been reading about an interesting phenomenon: Generation Z’s feelings of nostalgia for times they don’t remember: the 1980s, the 1990s and the year 2000. They are buying flip phones and uttering blasphemies against wokery. It looks as if all that Gen X preening on Facebook—how as children we rode our bicycles around from dawn until dinner without calling our parents even once—has made an impression.

One amusing thing about nostalgia is that it is a part of every age. There was a Sixties Revival in the Eighties; it brought back sleeveless turtleneck shirts, miniskirts, and “Twist and Shout” at school dances. Technologically, however, 1985 was not as distant from 1965 as 2025 is from 1985 and even 1995. I remember sending emails in 1990, but it was a slow, laborious process. I first submitted stories for online publication in 2002 or 2003, and I saw them first on a university computer, as I did not have my own internet connection. I didn’t have a mobile phone, either. Few people at the time, least of all me, understood how absorbing and inescapable the web was going to become.

Up until then my stories had been published out loud at an Open Mic night. And this was how community was then: in-person. In fact, that is how human life had always been: in-person. Of course, people could have long epistolary relationships, and we felt people on TV were in some way our friends. However, showing up on television ourselves was tremendously exciting, a break from the normal rhythms of social life, where we always shared a classroom or a workplace or a shopping mall or a restaurant or a piazza or some other meeting place in-person. People who sat at home alone all day were pitied; housewives walked or drove to the shops as much to see fellow adults at to get supplies.

I think what Generation Z is nostalgic for is normal, unplugged, in-person human life: for normal human civilisation.

This reminds me of the Highland Scots quietly rebelling under the Act of Proscription, 1746, which, some argue, sought to destroy their traditional way of life. (Having had a brief look at the Act of Proscription, it seems mostly aimed at disarming them all, controlling education and banning Highland dress.) One of their rebellions was to continue having “Gatherings” (Cèilidhean, or Ceilidhs) at private homes: sharing news, telling stories, singing and dancing.

The internet has not exactly destroyed our human way of life, but it has made it much less social. However, everyone who slips the bonds of their smartphones and laptops to take full-bodied part in a “meatspace” activity is reclaiming authentic social life. Going to a Ceilidh is a connection with Scottish or Irish culture, to boot, just as skating or playing ice hockey on a backyard rink is the Old Canadian experience par excellence.

Happily, ceilidh dances are still a normal part of Scottish life and not just done for tourists. The dances are taught to children in primary school and to adults on evenings and weekends all over the country. They feature at the larger Burns Night suppers, at the most classic Hogmanay events, at New Year’s Day races, at students socials, at weddings, and at “open houses” all year around.

Please note that I am taking about ceilidh-dancing and not the more elegant, more difficult and more revered Scottish Country Dancing (aka Reeling). This is also part of authentic Scottish life, but it is something of a stern discipline. Some of its devotees find ceilidh-dancing boring, clumsy and a touch barbaric. (My hard-won advice, for those who want to partake in SCD, is to begin with beginners’ classes and not just join the nearest group of old people dressed from a House of Bruar catalogue.*) By contrast, ceilidh dances are for everyone and anyone willing. They are usually supervised by a caller, who explains the steps.

On Saturday, some of us MMWP people are going to the Grassmarket Community Project’s St. Andrew’s Night Ceilidh on Edinburgh’s Candlemaker Row. (It isn’t really St. Andrew’s Night, but close enough.) We went to the same event last year and had a good time. The price of the ticket includes a supper of stovies (very Scottish) and a dram of whisky. There will be a live ceilidh band, of course: I wouldn’t be promoting it if no musicians there were!

I do not promise it will have the same “community feel” as our Michaelmas or Eastertide dances, where hospitality is Priority 1. This is Edinburgh, after all. Perhaps you can go alone to a dance in Glasgow and end up with 60 new best friends, but not here. Unless you are as outgoing as Victor from Local Hero, it is a good idea to go to Edinburgh public dances with friends or family. This puts you in a position of strength from which to survey the company and make friendly overtures to strangers.

Tickets are about £25 and you can find them here. There is now a little warning reading “going fast”, so don’t delay! If you are joining our merry band, let me know!

*Nota bene: I too dress from the House of Bruar catalogue.