05-16-2016, 09:15 AM
The rock stars, once expressions of youthful vitality, are themselves getting old.
Retrieved from the old Obituaries forum on the T4T site,
(Yes, this is my material):
Those who can perform or create are as hooked on what they do as an addict is on heroin. As with heroin, performance and creation become the cornerstone of life. The obvious difference is that heroin destroys. Creation and performance are possible means of achieving what Abraham Maslow calls self-actualization. (To be sure, artists who live miserable lives because they are miserable people, like Richard Wagner and Vincent Van Gogh, never achieve self-actualization). It may be a different activity, but last week I saw a performance of Il Trovatore on PBS. I had never seen such happy people in my life even if the opera is a tragedy.
Performing in the St. Joseph County Fair is still performing, even if it is in St. Joseph County, Michigan. It offers the same endorphins. Finding cheering crowds who travel from tens of miles away gives much the same effect as performing in Madison Square Garden.
As we all know, the early rock stars are genuinely old. But if they have avoided the STDs, alcoholism, and drug overdoses that have killed many, they can perform until their health gives out. Stage performance is a healthy activity, whether it is playing rock on an electric guitar or conducting a symphony orchestra. Some of them have followed the pattern of GIs as late-wave Silent and early-wave Boomers, staying fit and active as long as possible. Deaths of David Bowie and Glenn Frye notwithstanding, some of the early-wave rockers could live into their nineties.
So avoid drugs, alcoholism, and reckless sex, and the physical activity is better for one than the sedentary non-activity of some obese checker-cashier whose employer accommodates an ursine weight (but without the ursine agility and strength) with a chair or stool built to accommodate the weight of a bear. A high-fat diet and a sedentary life can kill as effectively as drugs, alcoholism, and reckless sex. Ask me about my late 500-pound cousin who died at age 46.
Retrieved from the old Obituaries forum on the T4T site,
(Yes, this is my material):
Those who can perform or create are as hooked on what they do as an addict is on heroin. As with heroin, performance and creation become the cornerstone of life. The obvious difference is that heroin destroys. Creation and performance are possible means of achieving what Abraham Maslow calls self-actualization. (To be sure, artists who live miserable lives because they are miserable people, like Richard Wagner and Vincent Van Gogh, never achieve self-actualization). It may be a different activity, but last week I saw a performance of Il Trovatore on PBS. I had never seen such happy people in my life even if the opera is a tragedy.
Performing in the St. Joseph County Fair is still performing, even if it is in St. Joseph County, Michigan. It offers the same endorphins. Finding cheering crowds who travel from tens of miles away gives much the same effect as performing in Madison Square Garden.
As we all know, the early rock stars are genuinely old. But if they have avoided the STDs, alcoholism, and drug overdoses that have killed many, they can perform until their health gives out. Stage performance is a healthy activity, whether it is playing rock on an electric guitar or conducting a symphony orchestra. Some of them have followed the pattern of GIs as late-wave Silent and early-wave Boomers, staying fit and active as long as possible. Deaths of David Bowie and Glenn Frye notwithstanding, some of the early-wave rockers could live into their nineties.
So avoid drugs, alcoholism, and reckless sex, and the physical activity is better for one than the sedentary non-activity of some obese checker-cashier whose employer accommodates an ursine weight (but without the ursine agility and strength) with a chair or stool built to accommodate the weight of a bear. A high-fat diet and a sedentary life can kill as effectively as drugs, alcoholism, and reckless sex. Ask me about my late 500-pound cousin who died at age 46.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.