By The Landlord
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” – Soren Kierkegaard
“How old would you be if you didn't know how old you are?” – Satchel Paige
“We are always the same age inside.” – Gertrude Stein
“The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.” – Robert Frost
“I shall soon be six-and-twenty. Is there anything in the future that can possibly console us for not being always twenty-five?” – Lord Byron
“How old are you?”
"... I'm as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth.” – Jonathan Swift (Polite Conversation, Dialogue 1, 1738)
“In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.” – Abraham Lincoln
“With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.” – Gratiano, The Merchant of Venice, William Shakespeare
“I'm so old they've cancelled my blood type.” – Bob Hope
“When I was a boy the Dead Sea was only sick.” – George Burns
“Age is just a number. It's totally irrelevant unless, of course, you happen to be a bottle of wine.” – Joan Collins
“We were sad of getting old, it made us restless
It was just like a movie, it was just like a song.” – Adele
“We don't grow older, we grow riper.” – Pablo Picasso
“For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again … All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, ‘Oh, why can’t you remain like this for ever!’ This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up. You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end.” ― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
“When I was One,
I had just begun.
When I was Two,
I was nearly new.
When I was Three
I was hardly me.
When I was Four,
I was not much more.
When I was Five,
I was just alive.
But now I am Six,
I'm as clever as clever,
So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever.” - AA Milne. Now We Are Six
It constantly pre-occupies, but also, subconsciously creeps up on us. How old am I now? Sometimes I actually have to think about it when someone asks. And, philosophically, it’s a question that could be answered in several ways, not merely with a number. So isn’t age, like time, to a certain extent, non-linear and down to perception? You’ll be slightly older by the time you’ve read through this, but then again you won’t. And as a result, hopefully you’ll feel a little younger.
As Milan Kundera put it: “There is a certain part of all of us that lives outside of time. Perhaps we become aware of our age only at exceptional moments and most of the time we are ageless.”
I have a vivid early memory of sitting in a rectangular green-striped plastic bowl, having a bath, but also a feeling of flying. Some years later, I was shocked to find that very same bowl, slightly broken at the edges, in my parents’ garden shed, filled with soil and the remnants of some flowers. At some point it had graduated as a planter, but that wasn’t the surprise, because that was a good use for it. The shock was the fact that the bowl was only about 12 inches long, and, I then realised, it must have been carried from one room to another with me and the water splashing around in it. So just what age, and how small was I, when sitting in it?
A number of other fragments remain in memory that happened before the age of four, but that was really the year when a flood of memories really crystallised, of feelings and fun, of self and age-awareness. It was a hot summer of gnats, and butterflies, and flying ants, and kids chasing other kids around the neighbourhood, playing football in the street and squirting each other with water from used Fairy Liquid bottles. It was a constant adventure, an urban Swallows and Amazons, and seemed to last forever.
Among many other memories along the way, I also remember my seventh birthday. I was given a new Raleigh bike which had been hidden in a cupboard. And I’d saved up 70p in pocket money. I felt like a king - I had really arrived. Those seven 10p pieces seemed like loads and loads. I spread them out on the floor, staring at them. Like Wordsworth’s daffodils, felt like you could only just perceive them all at once. Add any more, and you simply couldn’t keep track of them …
Age is a growing industry. For the first time in history there are people drawing pensions with parents also drawing pensions, and great grandparents graduating with new degrees at the same time as their great-grandchildren. Staying young in old age is a huge business, in books and websites, diets and the finance, health and pharma industries. Fifty is the new forty, sixty is the new fifty etc, but that's nothing new. “Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age.” wrote Victor Hugo. The super-rich are obsessed with technological paths to immortality, as detailed in the Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, one of his follow-ups to bestseller Sapiens.
But the media is awash with advice and shared information, such as US authors David Cravit and Larry Wolf’s book SuperAging: Getting Older Without Getting Old, which details all sorts of life-extending essentials, the ‘seven As’ of Attitude, Activity, Awareness, Achievement, Autonomy, Attachment and Avoidance. In other words, eat the right things and not too much of it, and stimulate your mind and body with exercise, goals, and a good community. And there’s a lot more going on at cellular and epigenomic levels …
That’s all out there, but in here, as usual, the Bar is filled with famous visitors offering many talking points about getting older, but also cracking a few jokes about it.
As for books, here’s CS Lewis: “No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.”
“Yeah, but by the time you read this, you'll be older than you remember,” says Chuck Palahniuk.
“But,” says another author, Mark Twain: “Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen,” getting the ball rolling, in reverse that is.
“Well sir, I am not young enough to know everything,” suggest Oscar Wilde, mischievously.
“How young can you die of old age?” adds Steven Wright, in the same spirit.
“Hmm. My heart is a thousand years old. I am not like other people,” declares Charles Bukowski, taking his regular place at the bar.
“I’ll say. Men are most virile and attractive between the ages of 35 and 55. Under 35 a man has too much to learn, and I don't have time to teach him,” says Hedy Lamarr, giving Charles the glad eye.
“But really. Is someone different at age 18 or 60? I believe one stays the same,” says the great Hayao Miyazaki, animatedly.
“I just yearn to be middle-aged again,” says Bob Hope. “Middle age is when you still believe you'll feel better in the morning.”
JM Barrie’s ageless novel …
Meanwhile, here’s another perspective. “The young always have the same problem - how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another,” chips in Quentin Crisp.
“But as you get older three things happen. The first is your memory goes, and I can't remember the other two,” says a chirpy entertainer and film star Norman Wisdom.
In reply, here’s Joan Collins again, checking herself in our bathroom mirror: “I think it’s a problem with beauty. It's like being born rich and getting poorer.”
“Yes, so much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why doesn't somebody wake up to the beauty of old women?” asks Harriet Beecher Stowe.
“Who are you calling old?” responds Joan, accusingly, but also possibly ironically.
“Do you know how old I am?” she asks again, as a slightly surprised Robert Frost sees her returning to the Bar for more champagne. “There’s not need to be diplomatic about it,” she adds.
Robert has a think, then replies: “A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.”
“Well I’d say -,” adds George MacDonald, glancing at Joan. “Age is not all decay; it is the ripening, the swelling, of the fresh life within, that withers and bursts the husk.”
Joan’s not sure how to respond to that. “Wrinkles should merely indicate where the smiles have been?” says Mark Twain, hopefully.
“Age is something that doesn't matter unless you're a cheese,” suggests Luis Bunuel, hungrily. Is is time for some wine to go with that?
Agatha Christie fills an awkward silence and roots around for a good follow-up. “An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets the more interested he is in her.”
Is she digging for a response? “Yes,” says Betty Friedan. “I’ll do it. Ageing is not ‘lost youth’ but a new stage of opportunity and strength.”
“Yes! We turn not older with years but newer every day,” adds Emily Dickinson.
“Age does not make us childish, as some say; it finds us true children,” adds Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. What elevated company in the bar today. The big guns are really around today.
“Indeed. The greatest potential for growth and self-realisation exists in the second half of life,” adds Carl Jung, encouragingly.
“I concur, Sir! We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing,” adds George Bernard Shaw.
So, is it ever too late to turn back the clock? Perhaps not. Here’s a supple Joseph Pilates springing into the Bar. “Physical fitness is the first requisite of happiness. In order to achieve happiness, it is imperative to gain mastery of your body. If at the age of 30 you are stiff and out of shape, you are old. If at 60 you are supple and strong then you are young.”
So we’re all getting older, but hopefully also a bit younger. Is that possible? Is that a good thing? Not if you’re one of Struldbruggs in the nation of Luggnagg, in Jonathan Swift’s masterful 18th-century satire Gulliver’s Travels, who are immortal but continue to physically age, and from the age of 80 are officially dead, even though they are alive.
Ageing, yet ageless Struldbruggs from Gulliver’s Travels, illustrated by Louis Rhead
And going in reverse, there’s also The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, originally a satirical short story by F Scott Fitzgerald about a man who ages in reverse, from senescence to infancy. It became a somewhat weird 2008 David Fincher film starring evergreen eye-candy Brad Pitt, joined by his thinking person’s lovely love interest Cate Blanchett briefly meeting him in the middle of life. But the real star of this film was the CGI:
So then is age, just a number? Hopefully yes, a musically number at least, as we invite your suggestions on this theme. Chairing this week’s topic is the agelessly sagacious and brilliantly returning barbryn! Please put your songs about getting older (at any time of life) in comments below for deadline at 11pm on Monday UK time, for playlists published next week. This week, then, we’ve come of age …
New to comment? It is quick and easy. You just need to login to Disqus once. All is explained in About/FAQs ...
Fancy a turn behind the pumps at The Song Bar? Care to choose a playlist from songs nominated and write something about it? Then feel free to contact The Song Bar here, or try the usual email address. Also please follow us social media: Song Bar X, Song Bar Facebook. Song Bar YouTube, and Song Bar Instagram. Please subscribe, follow and share.
Song Bar is non-profit and is simply about sharing great music. We don’t do clickbait or advertisements. Please make any donation to help keep the Bar running.