An Aging Artist
A short reflection on aging, gratitude and a life of making things
I was talking to a young artist (a songwriter) the other day who sounded just like I did in my early 20’s. I was looking around at young stars — in those days Silverchair was the grunge Justin Beiber — who all seemed to begin their careers at remarkably young ages, and I felt as if I wasn’t going to “make it” if I didn’t get something going right now. Like that year or month. I am sure a scientist could help explain the kind of urgency that young people feel, something related to brain chemistry. Whatever it is, I remember that churning visceral feeling of needing to break out, to really go for it, immediately.
And then, inevitably, regardless of how much success one has or does not have, there’s a certain depression that sets in with artists I think in their late 20’s as they realize that life just kind of continues to go on, the waves of fulfillment and longing come and go at any level of success. My 30’s were fine, good. I’ve been productive. I’ve made more good art and total crap than I thought was even possible when I was younger. And I keep making stuff. And rarely measure myself against the success of strangers, young or old.
A weird thing happened to me recently. I started to feel really alive and really grateful for it. It’s a new urgency but it’s not the frenetic, tie myself to a rocket for attention kind of urgency. Instead, it’s more of a celebratory, wondrous feeling, like I’m still alive and making stuff! I mean, in my twenties it was so difficult to imagine myself as a man in my forties. It just seemed unlikely, impossible, improbable. And yet here I am. And not only that, but I can do things I couldn’t do as a teenager or in my twenties. I have a much bigger range as a singer. I’m stronger than I’ve ever been (I started going to the gym), and I have all kinds of new abilities that weren’t even on my radar when I was young.
It’s difficult to anticipate when you are moving through the world as an artist how different artistic disciplines might inform each other in fruitful and positive ways. There is much I have taken from songwriting into painting around composition and the relationship between subject and form and content, and then there are all the “hard skills” like writing, coding, photography that tend to enhance any particular pursuit. Beyond that, there are so many organizational skills artists necessarily gain. I never knew organizing rock concerts would one day enhance my ability to envision and organize events on a college campus.
There’s something really joyful and cool about getting older that I never anticipated. Whereas in my 20’s the next decades seemed fuzzy and abstract and sometimes terrifying, looking out from this vantage point in my 40’s the next decades seem full of concrete possibilities. Like a river carving itself out of mountains, I don’t know where it’s going to flow. But I can see mountains as interesting challenges to overcome and the valleys as unknown but exciting paths. Either way, I know I’ll be kind of rafting this particular river of my life, this same water, the same water that’s been flowing since my grandmother grew my mother’s egg in her womb.
To be fair to my younger self, early adulthood for me really was full of unknowns. I had no real stability, my health was not great and I was acutely aware that my chosen career paths — rock musician or visual artist — seemed unlikely to bring any financial success. But from here, living that "normal life" with a wife, car, house, job and a son, things are much better. While everyone's path looks different, and stability can take many forms, there's a kind of wisdom that does come with age regardless of circumstances. What I tell my students now is what I know to be true: if you desire a creative life badly enough, you will cultivate it and make it work. And to the surprise of every young, fearful artist, there is real joy in growing older and wiser while continuing to develop new skills. What a gift creativity is, and our short lives art. What wonderful and interesting things we can make and do, crows feet and all.