Dementia

 

There are things you should do only when you are young.  There are enough ways to embarrass yourself when you get old.  You don't have to search for them or go back into the old treasure trove and try to pretend.  So. . . why this?  

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I could go on.  There are so many offenders.  Maybe millennials are right.  

But they are not.  I can imagine old rappers making new albums when they are in their 70s, big back that ass up booty things.  I try to envision to what imaginary audience McCartney or Starr were writing.  Then I try not to.  I'm sure old rappers will be doing the same thing twenty or thirty years from now.  We already know who Snoop's audience is--Martha Stewart.  She is getting jiggy with it.  

I imagine Ari Melber still trying to raise those lyrics to some level of intellectual or artistic profundity on his nightly news show.  It is too much now.    

Again, there are things that should only be done when you are young.  Like pole vaulting. 

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Sadly, I can't quit watching these.  It is terrible, really, and I am certain videos such as these will be called out soon enough.  Perhaps women will be required to wear something appropriate in athletic events of the near future.  But you know, I'm a fan.  I find no shame in gazing at the human form.  

But maybe we shouldn't try it at seventy, right?  

The old downward slope.  Etc. 

Some hit it earlier in life than others.  There are people stuck in a Jimmy Buffet time warp, but there are people stuck in the Kurt Cobain cult, too.  How do you not let go of such things?  

I watched a Brian Wilson/Beach Boy thing the other night.  I am a big fan of Mike Love's dance moves.  He taught Jagger what to do.  But he is a complete moron.  And so is Brian Wilson.  People try to make Wilson out to be a musical genius for writing "Help Me Rhonda" and "In My Room."  Now he was better than his peers for sure, but he was no Miles Davis or Vivaldi.  His major accomplishment, as he says, was learning every note of a Four Freshmen album.  

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He did it well, and I am a fan of both those early Beach Boy songs and of The Four Freshmen.  I'm not sure it was genius, though.  We would have to credit old barbershop quartets with that.  But try to listen to Wilson's "Smile" album.  I'll bet you can't make it all the way through.  

Remember,

That age is best, which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer.
But being spent, the worse, and worst,
Time still succeeds the former.

In conclusion. . . young people are good and fun, but not all of them.  Old people should be smarter.  

A new acquaintance sent me a quote last night which I will post here in part.  It is by Anna Akhmatova, a Russian poet with whom I am not familiar. 

Earth’s drink is much too sweet,
Love’s nets too close together,
May my name be in the textbooks
Of children playing in the street.

And so, I say, let us enjoy the fruits of our youth in our old age and not denigrate them by faulty imitation.  

Now, if you will excuse me, I need to get back to watching the pole vaulting championship.  I'm dying to see who wins.