This is 58: Storyteller and Journalist Donnell Alexander Responds to The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire
"Perspective on my early-life choices has been the least desired and most useful gift."
From the time I was 10, I’ve been obsessed with what it means to grow older. I’m curious about what it means to others, of all ages, and so I invite them to take “The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire.”
Here, journalist and storyteller responds. - Sari Botton
is an Ohio-born storyteller presently based in Los Angeles. His Substack West Coast Sojourn is predicated on the notion that the entire coast is his home. Alexander sometimes writes about fitness, in the grooviest possible fashion. He also frequently covers cannabis culture and politics. Portland and Brooklyn are the places outside of Ohio and California where this scribe has dwelled.
Alexander’s most recognized journalistic work includes An LSD No-No, KCRW’s Lost Notes episode “Neighborhood Secret,” his memoir Ghetto Celebrity, and the 1997 essay “Cool Like Me: Are Black People Cooler than White People?” From 2018-2020 he co-hosted the critically-acclaimed WeedWeek podcast, which made multiple best-of lists.
On the concepts around cool in American culture, Alexander has spoken at the Smithsonian Institution. His three children are Forrest, Wyatt, and Sol.
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How old are you?
58.
Is there another age you associate with yourself in your mind? If so, what is it? And why, do you think?
Twenty-seven. Prince was 27 when I discovered him. It used to play in my mind as an apex age.
But more significantly: When I was in my teens, and even into my 20s, I behaved as though I wouldn’t live longer than my heroes: Basquiat, Hendrix, Morrison. The 27 Club. There wasn’t a plan for living after that. Over the decades, time seems increasingly unreal.
Probably my most prominent goal is to compete in the Senior Games when I am 60. In high school I was a half-miler but fell disappointingly short of reaching my own sports goals. As an oldster, this athletic success would likely be sweeter than if I’d achieved it as a boy. It will certainly be better appreciated than by Young Me. And the definition of success won’t be so rigid.
Do you feel old for your age? Young for your age? Just right? Are you in step with your peers?
People have complimented me with the word “timeless,” which I chose to believe means “ageless.” Even when my lower back insists otherwise.
What do you like about being your age?
I like the sense of knowledge coalescing. Both knowledge of the intellect and knowledge of the body. My early days were about feeling my youthfulness and then basically reporting on the outside world from a place rooted in physicality.
Today I’m having a different experience.
Back in the 2010s, a Portland occupational therapist pointed out an easily fixable spinal issue—which had gone undiagnosed for decades—and my physical life has been more zesty since then. More present. In the middle of my life I have been blessed with improved balance.
Thank you once more, Portland Cassandra.
What is difficult about being your age?
Missing my children, who are 19, 23, and 27. Too much of their youth went by with me pursuing my political and aesthetic ideals. My children are great and prospering humans, but all about them that I didn’t have a hand in haunts me.
The physical pain part is interesting, not wholly annoying. Yet.
I miss my children, who are 19, 23, and 27. Too much of their youth went by with me pursuing my political and aesthetic ideals. My children are great and prospering humans, but all about them that I didn’t have a hand in haunts me.
What is surprising about being your age, or different from what you expected, based on what you were told?
In complete honesty: I didn’t think I would be as enamored of looking at myself in the mirror with no clothes on. When I get to my leanest, I stun myself. Usually I’m not quite where I want to be, but the other day I was like, “Wow. Dude!”
What has aging given you? Taken away from you?
Perspective on my early-life choices has been the least desired and most useful gift.
Life as a game that you can win used to be my jam. The truth is that buying that ideological construct kept me looking down the road too often.
How has getting older affected your sense of yourself, or your identity?
During the pandemic shutdown I took four very focused psilocybin trips that allowed me to prep for the last half of my life. Without 50+ years under my belt, those excursions might have just been about pushing some neural passages around. Instead, these sojourns gave me practical wisdom.
I drink probably 70 percent less than I did in my young-person-in-Hollywood and NYC years. Fifty percent less than my Portland day-drinking 2010s. Not carrying extra weight is a major motivation, as my regular Substack readers know. I walk and do all the yoga and stretching that I can. Mitigating the pain of aging and remaining flexible are huge to me.
What are some age-related milestones you are looking forward to? Or ones you “missed,” and might try to reach later, off-schedule, according to our culture and its expectations?
Probably my most prominent goal is to compete in the Senior Games when I am 60. In high school I was a half-miler but fell disappointingly short of reaching my own sports goals.
As an oldster, this athletic success would likely be sweeter than if I’d achieved it as a boy. It will certainly be better appreciated than by Young Me. And the definition of success won’t be so rigid.
What has been your favorite age so far, and why? Would you go back to this age if you could?
This will reek of cliché, but every year is more interesting to me.
I say this as a poor person whose financial success has been away for a while. My understanding of what work is keeps expanding. My fatherhood narrative is extremely compelling. And our scary, scary world is, in my opinion, powerful, high-stakes entertainment.
In the last years of my youth, I published my memoir and had landed some great gigs, but I was an entitled shit show. Consistently. I wouldn’t want to go back to “successful” me.
If I have to answer the question, I’d say age 27. San Francisco’s Bay Guardian had yet to hire me, and was writing for the right to live in that town—hustling, and really feeling The City. A move to LA Weekly came the following year and my life of living in smaller places would be done for a long while. Life got gnarly after 27.
During the pandemic shutdown I took four very focused psilocybin trips that allowed me to prep for the last half-year of my life. Without 50+ years under my belt, those excursions might have just been about pushing some neural passages around. Instead, these sojourns gave me practical wisdom.
Is there someone who is older than you, who makes growing older inspiring to you? Who is your aging idol and why?
Kris Kristofferson leaps to mind, because of his recent passing. An artist whose music I more admire than love, Kristofferson remained consistent in his human rights stances.
Also, he was an excellent sidekick in Blade.
The Asian seniors at the gym who swim and keep lean bodies are seriously who I want to be, in the physical sense. Also, I know a legally-blind guy in Fresno who’s so interestingly happy and self-sufficient. It’s a common, quiet dignity that’s quite inspirational. I want to land the plane like that guy.
What aging-related adjustments have you recently made, style-wise, beauty-wise, health-wise?
Experience has shown me what hunger actually means, as opposed to the casual way we tend to throw the word around. Having pockets of pure starving-artist lifestyle made real how much food humans actually need. At maximum, I have two meals a day. Three full meals would throw me off, at this point.
Getting my cannabis dosage right was a game-changing development, too. This applies to multiple parts of my life. For much of my life I consumed too much weed—and often the wrong strains—and it took legalization for me to understand this.
I drink probably 70 percent less than I did in my young-person-in-Hollywood and NYC years. Fifty percent less than my Portland day-drinking 2010s. Not carrying extra weight is a major motivation, as my regular Substack readers know. I walk and do all the yoga and stretching that I can.
Mitigating the pain of aging and remaining flexible are huge to me. Just as importantly, people are nicer to you if you’re physically attractive. It’s true everywhere, but especially in my town. I’ve got enough working against me without being physically repellent.
What’s an aging-related adjustment you refuse to make, and why?
Fake hair. Back in 2019, a West Hollywood barber dabbed in some fake shit to fill in the part of my hairline that’s receding. (“Everyone does it,” she insisted.) It lasted three days and I felt the diminishing returns each day. It seems a strange way to live.
In the last years of my youth, I published my memoir and had landed some great gigs, but I was an entitled shit show. Consistently. I wouldn’t want to go back to “successful” me.
What turn of events had the biggest impact on your life? What took your life in a different direction, for better or worse?
My memoir was set to go out to publishers on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. My takeaway upon staring up at the World Trade Center ablaze? This is going to be so bad for my book.
I was right. My career was never the same, for better and worse.
What is your number one regret in life? If you could do it all over again, what is the biggest thing you’d do differently?
I would have stayed in Brooklyn, at least until my book hit. It was a complicated project about race in late-20th century America. Hand-holding that needed to happen did not happen, and the memoir tanked.
I was raised a Jehovah’s Witness. Birthday celebrations weren’t a part of my life until children entered my world. For a long time I compensated by celebrating hard. Nowadays there’s limited expectations for the day. I can treat it as a nothing day.
What is high up on your “bucket list?” What do you hope to achieve, attain, or plain enjoy before you die?
I want my last act to be dominated by eating amazing food in fascinating locales. The specifics remain unknown.
What are your plans for your body when you’re done using it? Burial? Cremation? Body Farm? Other? And what do you expect to happen to your “soul” or “spirit” after you die?
I was raised a Jehovah’s Witness and as a teen rejected the outcome that faith led me to expect. Since then, pretending to know what happens next seems silly and presumptuous.
However my family chooses to deal with my body is cool.
What’s your philosophy on celebrating birthdays as an adult? How do you celebrate yours?
Again, I was a Jay-Dub. Birthday celebrations weren’t a part of my life until children entered my world. For a long time I compensated by celebrating hard. Nowadays there’s limited expectations for the day. I can treat it as a nothing day.
Now, if it’s significant to a romantic partner? Or if my kids make a point of celebrating with me? Or a friend wants to rage? I shall go with the flow.
"This will reek of cliché, but every year is more interesting to me."
Thank you for this. Not a cliche at all, as the vast majority believe the polar opposite.
These are such cool and interesting answers -- cool and interesting life arc, too. (We overlapped in the 2010s PDX, it looks like.)
I totally get it about the 27 Club. Cobain was on my 27 list in addition to Hendrix, Janis, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones. Apparently the "27 Club" idea didn't hit pop culture until after Kurt died (?) but I was sure aware of it long before that.