I noted with interest this morning an article on Chrissie Hynde reported in the Guardian today that reported that (having cut out extraneous words):
Hynde, at 71, is an advocate for keeping on keeping on with “no abatement of intensity. It's the life of the artist. You never retire. You become relentless.”
I think she has made the right choice because it is, of course, a choice that she has made.
I am well aware that by being an artist Hynde might well have provided herself with that option. The manual labourer might not have that option. Nor might they want it, but I am also not sure that Hynde was merely referring to the option of work: she was, I think, referring to the curiosity that drives life itself.
I am aware that many readers of the blog are older. Maybe it is because I am no longer youthful: perhaps we find each other.
What I do find encouraging is that there is a fire in many of the comments that suggests that many commentators are possessed of the relentless to which Hynde refers.
Life is, I think, about more than keeping on keeping on for as long as possible. It is about believing that there is a reason to keep on doing so.
The thing I hate most about marketing targeted at older people is that it suggests otherwise. So much of it is about pandering to comfort as we are encouraged to fade into obscurity and indifference collecting our last memories along the way before the capacity to do so disappears - which is the threat always implicit in the messaging. Call it money extraction for as long as that is possible, if you like.
Very politely, sod that. Chris's Hynde is right. Older age is for the chain gang of those relentlessly pursuing a better life for those to come:
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Great post, great song.
Having done work and guitar playing, work is much harder both physically at least – I’d prefer to be an artist any day but never got there. However, I still dream of doing so – part of my own method of keeping myself going.
🙂
One of the things that I am sure all of us have noticed as we reach our 6th, 7th or 8th decade is the way that attitudes in society change.
As a child stories that featured a wise old man or wise old woman were common. Now, in the West at least, the assumption seems to be that anybody over 60 is likely to be suffering from dementia and a semi-permanent hospital case. Which brings us to Joe Biden.
Who despite having guided bills through a violently hostile House and barely friendly Senate that are bigger and more important than anything achieved by his predecessors since the 1960s appears to be regarded by a majority of the American electorate as past it.
Of course much of this type of attack is to advance the cause of ageing juvenile gangster Donald Trump, 77, and his gang members, but it does also reflect an underlying current attitude to age that is as common here as it is in the US.
Another interesting feature of the Joe Biden Is Too Old campaign is that it is led by Rupert Murdoch who is 13 years older than Biden.
Well noted
Yesssss! Well done Richard to put that all together.
I might add the following – with feeling:
Artists do vision, we’re compelled to push forward into the unknown … in doing so we learn various techniques, including the ‘sod it – let’s try’. It really is a compulsion, that is what defines the artist. We simply can’t stand still.
It is the role of the older artist to provide a mental framework for the vision and confidence to those with the energy to push further. Good on the few – successful or otherwise – who do that.
But the artist – in whichever profession – is followed by a pack of predators. As soon as an idea can be commercialised, they swoop in, apply ‘management’, attract investment, employ the little men to do the work …. develop the business …. and offload the artist, who has conveniently put their lives on the line to do all the R&D for free, and who by definition has lacked the stable income to have accumulated assets or a liveable pension. Green entrepreneurs are no different – ideas to ‘save the planet’ come at the same cost.
So a question: how to properly reward the artist? I await useful, constructive answers ….
How much does the artist want?
And what proportion is financial?
Good questions – the important thing is that they are asked. Too often the answers are casually assumed to be ‘nothing’ and ‘non-financial’ recognition (if that).
Often, the artist doesn’t know – or more accurately, has no framework for considering what might be fair in an accounting sense. How do accountants quantify risk and value? Some kind of checklist of pragmatic options would be really helpful: a share in the business, how would that work? A dividend? A share in the sale price? A proportion of profit? Most older artists have zero clue as to how to even place their contribution on the financial side of the table.
As well as the contribution of an individual artist, there is the issue of capturing collective value over time. Consider how gentrification works for example. How can the efforts of the artists – typically renting – whose efforts made an area trendy in the first place be incorporated into the compound escalation of property values that they initiated? The artist is forever investing in other people’s assets, and the rate of return is – well, usually negative.
It’s a huge area and clearly very diverse. Clearly any solution will vary with the situation. I’d suggest that an element of security might be a consideration. But even having a recognised framework would render their contribution visible.
Excellent questions
Artist’s Newsletter used to address issues like this. I don’t know if it still does. It is a long time since I write for them.
Replace artist with scientist and most of this still holds true.
I’m 75 and moved to Ireland 8years ago with my wife for an adventure. Great people, beautiful country.
Since being here we have, like a number of similarly aged friends, installed PVs and planted trees. Future thinking for us, our kids, their kids and the planet. Saves money, fossil fuels and, hopefully, acts as a spur to others.
I’m much more politically aware now than I have every been (not least down to your blog and your books – what else can I say but thank you).
It’s not only the young but the Social Liberal elders that can make a change.
Agreed
And thanks
As my pensions slowly come to fruition I will be cutting back on work, but not life. I may end up in an old folks home but it won’t be by choice.
If there are no grandchildren, there is always art, voluntary work, part time work.
I do not intend on riding into the sunset and disappearing.
I hope to go out still shouting, or at least typing.
I wonder who does most pandering to older people? Marketing agencies or government.
At a very low level the winter fuel allowance illustrates the way government thinks of the elderly – we can’t just have done with it and add £5/week to the state pension. for two reasons:
1. The view that the elderly can’t budget so need reminding to put the heating on and the lump sum payment does that.
2. It would be taxable and we don’t do more of that to the elderly as they vote.
Both are very condescending attitudes.
Today is the last day of the butterfly count. As an elderly person on my own I can just relax in the garden and count; not many but more variety.
However, when I woke up this morning my heating was on!
Plenty out this afternoon
“The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”
Jack London
Who died at 40. Those whom the gods love…
I saw her play 20 years ago now, quite a woman.
And lets not forget all those clubs, voluntary groups and services that rely on older volunteers
“…Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light….”
Indeed
To use the words of the immortal punk rock legend Charlie Harper..
“Keep on running till you burn”..
🙂
Many years ago, as I became more aware of differential aging, and who it was that fared best, I decided that it boiled down to the simple principle “keeping going keeps you going”. So, at 66, I am working full time with no intention to retire any time soon, and still just middle aged when many contemporaries are now old.
Agreed
Keep walking
Stretch
Be interested
Do new things
I am 76. I consider myself extremely fortuntate to work in a fast-growing IT consultancy, where I’m 20 years the senior of the management team, and am surrounded by bright, generous, curious peope who want to do their very best.
They don’t see my age as a problem, but as a bonus in that I have 55 years of experience they can tap into.
Colin Hines ho I work with is 76. He’s still decidedly active.
I’m nearly 72, teach 6th form 5 days a week (22 hrs) , run trails with my dogs in harness, am learning Welsh and aiming at a trail 50km in 2024. OK bits are dropping off, but I fully subscribe to ‘use it or lose it’.
Good luck with all that
Poets of the world unite!
It’s hard not to be angry at the world right now
It’s hard not to be angry with people who
Use violence to make gains
Or use words to put people right down and in chains
It’s hard not to be angry with people who
Use crafty channels to steal
Or use laws to make people kowtow and to kneel
It’s hard not to be angry with people who
Use power over the weak
Or use ruses to abuse and to hurt the meek
It’s so hard not to be angry at the world right now
It’s so very hard not to be angry at the world right now
But, being angry doesn’t really help
But, being just angry so doesn’t really help
Unless we can use our shared anger to
Bring strong peace to the violent
Bring deep justice to the lawmakers
Bring fierce strength to the abusers
Bring love where there is hate
Bring hope where there is despair
Bring poetry where there is only anger
To bring poetry where there is only anger…
Buckingham
20/4/23
I spent my working life as a research scientist and have immense admiration for colleagues in the field who have kept going into their 70s and 80s. I would never have been able to keep up with the literature. Now I am in my 80s, I find my memory and concentration declining further. But economics is a good new interest for an ex-scientist.
Thoughts
I now use a simple rule. To be convinced of something, I need both data and a plausible explanation. With a statistical correlation on its own, or an elegant hypothesis on its own, I try to keep an open mind.
Where to look
Contradictions. In looking for a research topic, a good place to start is where the plausible prediction and the data don’t fit. There must be something we don’t understand going on.
Assumptions. We can see how other people’s assumptions are absurd, but what about our own assumptions? If we look behind our assumptions, is there something much more interesting? I have queried a couple of Richard’s assumptions but without any great success. For instance, the idea that thin air money can’t simply disappear back into thin air.
Two hates
“We all know”, or its right-wing incarnation “The British People”.
“That is all you need to know”, as in “He writes for the Guardian, that is all you need to know.”
I realise I have been lied to all my life. I can just remember the overthrow of a secular democracy in Iran to install a Western puppet government, but that is not what we were told at the time. It has been sad, re-reading Paul Mason and Kate Raworth. Both thought that the internet would bring about a new era in the dissemination of knowledge. Instead it has favoured the spread of a cancer of disinformation. And trawling the internet for past comments has turned into a wonderful way to dispose of unwanted colleagues.
Thanks
Wise words