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With seven decades under me, I want the chance to reflect back on the past I\u2019ve known and to imagine forward to what might yet be by learning from others \u2013 young and old, here and there, alike and different, artists and others.<\/p>\n
The years I\u2019ve lived have given me a many-layered foundation, built slowly over 70 years, an aggregate mix of success and acknowledgment, failure and loss, gaps and continuities. The foundation is a strong but supple underpinning that offers something steadier to stand on than I had when I was twenty, a ground for making and strengthening relationships,\u00a0for continuing to make a living and a difference, for being curious, being mad,\u00a0being silly, for listening, loving, thinking, writing, acting up, and continuing to dream.<\/p>\n
I want to share what I\u2019ve accumulated and see if it\u2019s useful beyond myself. I want to use the past as a springboard for my curiosity and for new connections and ideas. I\u2019d love to inspire others to do the same, to use the foundations we\u2019ve built to make things better.<\/p>\n
Get up, I tell myself. Get up! \u00a0Let’s get going!<\/p>\n
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On turning 70, I became clearer than ever that my time is limited.<\/p>\n
So, if not now\u2026when?<\/p>\n
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I have so many questions.<\/p>\n
What do we, who are 70 and beyond, do with the extra years that modern medicine and knowledge have given us? How do we mix past and present? How do we, as an ever-larger percentage of the population, answer these questions and make a difference today?<\/p>\n
How is the nature of work changing? How is the economy around us changing? Can we be part of imagining a different future?<\/p>\n
How can we live together with all our differences? What can we do to strengthen the common ground that seems to be getting lost?<\/p>\n
What can we learn from artists\u2019 experience of work, or of aging, or of the common good? How are artists adding to wider community conversations? What more can we do?<\/p>\n
I want to provoke new attempts to find answers.<\/p>\n
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In an eighth decade, what patterns can I make? What new ways can I move? I\u2019m still trying to change the world.<\/p>\n
I want to use my old-fashioned, old-fogey ways and mix them up with sometimes hard-for-me-to-understand new ways: \u00a0new technologies, new ideas about the social world, new understandings of the natural world.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m eager to bounce ideas around with younger people. I want to be a novice again.<\/p>\n
I want to be a spur, a spark, l\u2019ancienne terrible<\/em> \u2013 though this personality type doesn\u2019t really sound like me.<\/p>\n I’d love to figure out how to call myself. It seems we\u2019re often asked for a few words to identify who we are. I\u2019ve never had a good answer. So, at this point, am I . . .<\/p>\n A vintage instigator? I want to keep making it up.<\/p>\n I want time and a charge that asks me to go back to the little piles of notes and ideas left behind at times in my life, notes that are now stacking up in storage, to think about them one more time, to clean them out, pass them along, or at least recycle the paper.<\/p>\n Jonas Mekas, now 93, put it this way: \u201cMy own personal work was done in pieces. Now all those pieces are crying out to be completed. I\u2019m obsessed with finishing them.\u201d<\/p>\n The spirit of making it up \u2013 of life and work as an experiment \u2013 has run through my life from the start, from organizing marching majorettes in high school, to making art, creating an artist workshop at a television station, helping start formal and informal organizations, networks, and conversations, and, just last year, helping to create, fifty years later, a new alumni-in-residence program at my college alma mater.<\/p>\n I want to keep living an experiment, where the results are unknown and possibility is wide open.<\/p>\n
\nAn antique inventor, rabble rouser, catalyst?
\nAn always curious old codger? (Can women be old codgers?)
\nOr maybe, a seasoned listener and observer who\u2019s been around the block \u2013 more than a few times?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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