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On being "old"
I don't fell much older than I did at 20. But tell that to a 25 year old when
they are telling mehow things are today, that the culture has changed and I
just don't see what has happened.I'm working with a group of young people, all
less than 25, that find my contributions tosystem analysis and strategy
developments, as well as risk management approachreally boring and irrelevant.
Wait until their thoughts catch up with 61 years of experience! They will
understand when reality bites them in the butt.
On Friday, September 27, 2019, 07:10:43 PM PDT, Alan Sondheim
<sondh...@panix.com> wrote:
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I just have a few comments to make; at the age of 76 I should be entitled
to! :-) Aging, in the U.S., is the last refuge of violent caricaturing,
laughter, and ignorance in the mainstream media. Almost every episode, for
example, of Saturday Night Life, a comedy/political show, mocks the
"elderly" qua elderly, bumbling fools forgetting everything. There have
been similar skits on Samantha Bee (for all her astute analysis of
gender issues, she doesn't hesitate to mock older Americans), Stephen
Colbert, and the like. In advertising, "grandparents" seem to have one
role, taking care of grandchildren and occasionally taking walks by
themselves into a sunset. It's violent, disgusting, and reflects
attitudes that are taken for granted here. When I bring the issue up, it's
considered a non-issue. But it's deeply prevalent with real world
consequences.
My highschool has a magazine, and I wrote as part of my bio a few months
ago, "Alan Sondheim, Looking forward to not retiring." We're expected to
retire. We're considered outdated, in need of constant tech help, and
unable to comprehend the world we're in. I don't curate any more (I
started things like the Atlanta Biennale), but if I did, I'd want to
organize an angry show, not "images of aging" but a show of pushback, an
exhibition of fury. An exhibition to start a conversation, not about art
or aesthetics, but about what's happening and what can we do about it. And
a show created by older people, a show about ugly caricatures. And
pushback in the media as well. (I know there are exceptions - but they're
exceptions btw.)
There's more; if we're not working within an (academic for example)
institution, we're forgotten for the most part. I have to constantly push
myself, legitimize myself as someone with something to offer. I constantly
write reminder letters, which a friend of mine calls "begging letters,"
etc. This is the result of another split, those within and without
academic and other institutions. The divides have a complex relationship.
Sooner or later almost everyone is "let go."
But the real problem, the fundamental problem, is one of disappearance, as
if there is nothing "we" have to offer. It's true that there are
conditions and diseases associated with aging - death of course being
fundamental - but it's also true that we don't have to live _as if that
were the only case._ (Recently I put out a cd called Future Speed Future,
which is composed largely of furiously fast instrument playing - in a way
ugly-edgy, showing-off: look what I can do, forget the age. I'm inspired
by Hokusai's "Old man mad about painting" - that one can do things at any
age that one never thought was possible before.) And I'd like to see that,
as well as protest, as the substance for an exhibition - a show that in
other words would leave no one behind. A show that protests, a furious
show.
(Btw this isn't directed at anyone or any show proposal etc. here - this
has been on my mind for at least a decade.)
Best, Alan
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http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
