Substack user Joshua Corey writes
In Russian novels characters in their fifties are routinely described as being “in the prime of life.” Clinging to this.
Substack user Joshua Corey writes
In Russian novels characters in their fifties are routinely described as being “in the prime of life.” Clinging to this.
According to The Writer's Almanac, John Updike gave this account of his creativity—
No amount of learned skills can substitute for the feeling of having a lot to say, of bringing news. Memories, impressions, and emotions from your first 20 years on earth are most writers' main material; little that comes afterward is quite so rich and resonant. By the age of 40, you have probably mined the purest veins of this precious lode; after that, continued creativity is a matter of sifting the leavings.
Seems like a pretty good description of aging, too.
Maybe if I’m lucky ten or fifteen people will listen to me at a Toastmasters club. I think the thrill of creating a connection with others is still pretty much the same though.Six hundred people thought they were coming to see comedy and they got some of that and then, to their amazement, they were standing and singing “America” and “I Saw Her Standing There” and “How Great Thou Art,” and they were stunned by how beautiful they sounded. It’s stunning. People spend so much time alone, plugged into electronics, and here they are with an intense sensation of humanity. They don’t applaud for themselves, they simply are very moved.
This is the beauty of old age. Your ambition has faded away. You’re not going to set off fireworks. The world has gone off in other directions. AI is coming on fast and soon you’ll record yourself saying all the vowels and consonants, prepositions, conjunctions, and the computer will program Moby-Dick read in your voice — add a few other vowels and you’ll have Proust in French spoken by you, voilà! — but right now it’s still possible for an old man and a few hundred strangers to create an intimate evening together that’s not like anything else.…
Having seen so much history gives a person a deep love of his country and people. So I want to keep on working, doing my outmoded show, speaking in my odd American voice.
Via Garrison Keillor, Garrison Keillor and Friends
One by one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.
James Joyce, born on this day in 1882.
The strange thing about growing old is that the intimate identification with the here and now is slowly lost; one feels transposed into infinity, more or less alone, no longer in hope or fear, only observing.
Albert Einstein
Letter to Queen Elisabeth of Belgium
12th January 1953
Via Letters of Note