Call me Wheezer. I’m the asthmatic kid who couldn’t be counted on to do much more than react, slumped in the corner, watching with bemused interest. Or call me Lumpy, Wally’s overweight friend, the one without Wally’s good looks or Eddie Haskell’s sharp wit. I am Jeff’s Porky, and Sergent Joe Friday’s partner who kept changing every few years due to contractual disputes, ill health, or general lack of personality. I am Durward Kirby to Garry Moore. In all possible ways, I am Regis Philbin.
There was a time when I was better looking and so was everybody with whom I hung around. I could stay up late abusing my body with alcohol, tobacco and drugs and still function the next day. I showed promise. People cut me slack based on that promise, and maybe because they felt I wasn’t evil, just stupid.
They were right, I wasn’t evil, just arrogant and self-centered. Blindly egotistical. All the while I simmered with a quiet rage that I hadn’t been given the reward I was due. Why were other people prospering while I wasn’t? Where were my just desserts?
Turns out I received just as much acclaim and support as I was due. If I wanted more, I should have worked harder. Simple, really.
I don’t even have any advice to give the young, because the world has changed so dramatically that I can’t imagine how any artist, musician or writer can fit in or get ahead in an era where all content is delivered instantly, for free.
Good luck, young people. Take care of your taut bodies and enjoy them while you can. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.
The world is awash in ways to deliver content, but content worth delivering is still in short supply. Now that everybody has a phone that can take a good picture there are still precious few photos that will make a viewer gasp in wonder. Now that recording music or video is within the reach of anyone with a laptop, there are still few movies or music compilations to get excited about.
The fact that content is given away for free is hardly an inducement for anyone to devote him to life-long discipline in the creative arts. Getting a Master of Fine Arts in a discipline will not lead to any sort of gainful employment. There are no meaningful certifications in the creative arts.
We are in a strange place with our culture. I can hear Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five play Potato Head Blues on my cell phone, laptop, pad, and if I were to buy a blue-tooth enabled hearing aid, I could even listen to that snappy tune on that if I wanted. I think I already own one pair of good headphones and three pairs of ear buds, enabling me to listen without being constrained to any one location. I have the freedom to consume anything that is created nowadays, except that I am unaware of any such product. One could assume that alive today there are many artists as talented and driven as was Armstrong, but I have no way to knowing who they are.
Would Armstrong have been able to develop his prodigious talent if he had been unable to get paid for writing and performing? I imagine if he had to endure four years at University in order to get a teaching credential in music in order to lead a high school band, such an ordeal might have taken the wind out of his sails before he ever bothered to record himself and distribute it free on Youtube. Burdened by student loan debt and exhausted at the end of the day from preparing lesson plans and the onus to constantly proving his worth to school administrators, he might have soured on the whole music thing by the time he hit his prime. Bix Beiderbecke only made it to the age of 28, so going that route would have surely been a fool’s bargain for him. Chopin and Mozart would have proved too difficult to get along with the school board or the PTA, and their only hope might have been to seek permanent disability status.
Maybe the reason I don’t know what to get excited about in the arts today has less to do with my age than it does with the fact that we have created a world that actively discourages creativity. Rather than being a boon to artists, the Internet has proven to be the final stake through the heart, the last knot in the noose, the biggest clump of dirt thrown on the coffin.
geezersabroad 