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getting old(er)

26/1/2020

I thought I'd take a look at the getting old and getting older hashtags on Instagram. You know, as you do. Because, well, I'm getting old and thought I might like some company. As you do. Or no.

Not a single photo of an old person. All young people posing and curvy and muscley (never did care for muscley), complaining about turning 40 or 30 or whatever. Putting themselves onto nonsensical hashtags just to get views. Quite frankly I was disappointed by the parade. Most looked, well, not themselves. Face-lifted actually.

I can remember reading Seventeen magazine as a teen and it all going over my head; putting on my checked woollen skirt (mum insisted on wool for the winter, she was a quality lady, I had two checked skirts) and thinking how big it made me look. A terrible (understatement) inferiority complex. Never looked anything though like these "oldies" online, all trying to get a look-see from the opposite (and these days same) gender.

I'm glad I'm over all that. Getting old is NOT for the fainthearted but I'm so glad I didn't have Instagram to prop me up in the 1960s. At my age it's fun, not a competition.

A girl of the LOVE generation? Hardly. But I sort of like to think so.

photo © Rightasrain Studios 1973

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gutted by music

17/1/2020

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We are doing a collab. My piano audio file returns via email with her accompanying viola. I double click the file. I'm done for.

I sit in front of my computer monitor. My head goes down in my hands and the tears flow. I bury my head in woven arms. My face is wet with tears, I'm keening, sobbing. I can't stop. I play the piece again and again. I can't get enough.

It's the viola. Beautifully, hauntingly played, mesmerising. The notes reach down inside my soul, my body, my spirit, my entire humanness and pull at the guts of me. It soars, swoops, dives; dives to the very depths, its dark night chords pulling and pushing; it goes up an entire key from the depths and reaches for the sky. I'm flying and dipping with it.

And my piano, haunting and triumphant it carries the viola and the viola carries me. I am carried away. Hurting, loving, crying, abandoned, restored, lifted, dropped.

Later in bed I plug in earphones and listen again. Put my tablet away and sleep on a bed of notes.

"Stuff that seems to come out of nowhere bam can be so confronting, yet means so much."

I said to her.

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getting old(er)

gutted by music

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