Down and Not Quite Out in Middle-Age

Listening to Patti Smith's "Banga" gets me to thinking about how she had to be older to make her most youthful and innocent sounding album.  Sure, her wisdom and experience is clearly present as well, but there is a quality to her voice that is so sweet and pure and a vibrancy to some of the music that borders on playfulness.  It is easily one of her most powerful pieces of work

I wish I felt more youthful and innocent, and especially would like to feel more vibrant and playful.  I don't want to be young again - wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy, especially in these gosh-darn messed up modern times.  Actual youth confuse me, what with their discarding of books and films for first person shooter "games" and tiny little screens to view photos and mini-movies.  At least five or six times a day I want to go for the throat of some young adult who will ask some variation of "What is that?" about a very newsworthy current event.  Now that newspapers are rarely found in homes and the evening news is just one of 600,000 options for post-work or school viewing, there is no need to keep up with anything that hasn't been reported by your Facebook friends, and most of that noise you can just scroll right by.  We know more about what our internet friends had for lunch than we do about what our government is doing.

I'm not the first middle-aged curmudgeon to bitch and moan about such things, and I won't be the last.  I am just as powerless as my peers to do anything about it as well.  Just sit back and let it all be, but I'll complain about it too.  That's how I roll.

My own attention span seems to shrink like an Amazon rainforest, month to month, day to day, hour to hour.  By the time I'm ready for diapers again, I'll have the focus of heavily caffeinated gnat, unless the depression helps me balance out into something like more of a flatliner with frequent brain jolts.  Most of my thoughts these days are centered around doing things I haven't the motivation or stamina to actually accomplish.  I have mental "To Do" lists of cleaning, writing, painting, exercising, cooking and learning but the exhaustion keeps me grounded in a chair, the joint pain and back pain and foot pain makes it difficult to move and the overwhelmingness of it all knocks me down when I start to gather the strength to move a finger.  I'll just sit it out.  This too shall pass.  Tomorrow I'll get up and get things done.  I ain't been licked yet.  Ms Ross sang that one, kids.  Google it.

Hell, I have things to do and things to say.  These damn young 'uns, I'm not going to let them take over the world just yet.  We are going to have to share for a bit longer.  You go and do your hot yoga. I'll just figure out a way to get up off my ass.  We shall live again, we shall live again.