Where Are Our Old Friends.
I was 23 and stupid young. My girlfriend and I were lunching at a cafe when we became transfixed by five very, very old people. Octogenarians, at least. They were giggling and smiling rambunctiously, beaming impossible energy—as if their life force was pouring in from a remote, celestial pool. Everyone was watching them.
Then they noticed us. One of them, the ring leader, it seemed, with a shock of white hair under a white straw hat, walked right for us and introduced himself as “John Whitehead”. He handed us a card with his name and number. “We”, he said, nodding back at his table, “would like to invite you over to our place for cocktails”. We sat in awe as he walked back to his seat, the rest of his cabal of ancient misfits winking and nodding at us.
It was the most exotic proposition I’d ever encountered. I wanted to call. But I didn’t have the slightest sense of how to hang out with someone that old. Like, what would we even talk about? What would I say? I kept his card in a special place in my closet and debated calling every day. Then, somehow, the card disappeared. I tried to look him up dozens of times. He mentioned he was a writer. Nothing. (Maybe they really were from outer space).
I regularly cite my failure to call as one of my biggest regrets and cowardices.
Somewhere along the line, the west lost touch with the concept of elders.
In 1964, at peak Rock N’ Roll and in the wake of the baby boom, the US had more 16 year-olds than any other age group. For the first time, the commercial advertising apparatus had to market itself to the youth—to speak and talk and act and look like the newest and largest segment of the consumer population. Commerce had to learn the patois of rock ‘n roll, and the Overton window on beauty, relevancy, power, and sexuality began to trend younger, and younger, and younger. As a result, the overriding semiotic powerhouse of western culture—what we now refer to as pop culture—is today governed by the commercial propagation of youth worship.
Among its many side effects—as made obvious by my inability to holler at old, vital, wise Mr. John Whitehead—is that cultural fluency with the elderly has fallen off a cliff.
I am 43 now. I think. No, 44.
“Elder” still has this forested, distant tone. A holder of a more fleshed wisdom than I possess. (I’m more the dumb flesh of a conduit. My pearls mostly incidental, non-proprietary things.)
So when Tim Adalin asked me to participate in a Voicecraft session as the featured “elder”, my throat caved in. (My somatic tells are always at the throat).
We Are The Elders We’ve Been Waiting For.
I want to be someone’s John Whitehead. He had made peace with death. It was in his eyes. There’s no other path to that kind of vitality—I know that now. Maybe that’s what scared me then. The proximity of the elderly to the dark side of the coin is precisely the kind of existential reminder we, in our youth worship, blot out.
So, first things first, let’s make that peace. I have some ideas on that here.
Second: We must be willing to become elders ourselves.
If not us, who?
And so I told Tim “yes”. Fuck it. I’ll be an elder. I do have something that is mine to offer. Something not only vessled. Something earned. We all do.
FEAR OF THE ELDERS
In 2004 I was asked to fly to Wisconsin to spend two weeks alone with my grandfather Edwin to help nurse him back after a fall. The family members were all taking turns, as he lived alone. He was mobile and spry but I was terrified that I wouldn't have anything to talk to him about because he was an old dog and I was a pup. I spent all my summers with him and my grandmother but wasn't close to him as he was always working. The gift that the universe threw at me during that period was one of the greatest in my life. Turns out he and Frank Lloyd Wright were close friends and he was always a young member at the Taliesin who could buffer Frank from fighting with the other dinner guests. He was hilarious, brilliant and always wanted be a stand up comic which was my full time gig at the time, something as shocking as it was bizarre. I miss Edwin the Elder but I had my time sitting in his orbit and for that I am grateful and gleeful. As far as making peace with death, a work in progress is my gear right now. LOVED YOUR POST...
You might enjoy this podcast on elderhood I recorded with Stephen Jenkinson a few years back.
https://youtu.be/Y8xwU-apFFw