This is 65: Musician and Arts Journalist Ian Grey Responds to The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire
"I’m incredibly grateful that I somehow haven’t lost the music-fan super-enthusiasm of my youth."
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, musician and arts writer Ian Grey responds. - Sari Botton
***Trigger warning: suicide. If you are having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 800-273-8255***
How old are you?
Turned 65 just last month. Watched Maid on Netflix with my partner. Talked about my amazing big day present, a trip to Paris!
Is there another age you associate with yourself in your mind? If so, what is it? And why, do you think?
No. Because…well, here:
In my late 20s I was hit in the face by a bus going 47 mph in Times Square. I suffered severe brain damage leading to total black outs lasting months. This entirely screwed up my sense of linear time. I (think) I recall seeing my therapist one day and after telling her about what had happened that week, she gently prodded me for more details. I tried. Turned out, what I was recalling as “last week” was a week that occurred three months before.
In my late 20s I was hit in the face by a bus going 47 mph in Times Square. I suffered severe brain damage leading to total black outs lasting months. This entirely screwed up my sense of linear time.
Do you feel old for your age? Young for your age? Just right? Are you in step with your peers?
I often feel much younger than I did when I was physiologically younger because, as a person with bipolar disorder and PTSD even before the accident, I’m no longer battling a constellation of symptoms to make it through every day, things like extreme mania, crushing depressions, unbeatable insomnia. Something people don’t mention about mental illness is this: it’s exhausting!
As for being in or out of step with my peers—I’m unable to think about it that way. Partially due to the lingering effects of brain damage on my career as an arts journalist and as a fiction writer but also because artists seldom, in my opinion, enjoy careers defined by linear time. I mean, Kendrick Lamar was 27-ish when he made his masterwork, “To Pimp a Butterfly.” David Bowie was inspired by it and, at age 69, created his own greatest record, “Blackstar.” Was Bowie a laggard?
What do you like about being your age?
So many things! Hard years of therapy have paid off. I’ve sustained a sane, wonderful relationship with a brilliant, passionate partner for 21 years. I very seldom suffer panic attacks or depressions. Stumbling on the perfect pharmaceutical cocktail helps hugely. More importantly, I’m no longer poleaxed with shame over my illness.
Mental health extends to the quality of my writing and music-making. First drafts no longer fill me with dread (or less dread at least!) If a story isn’t punching its weight, I’m okay with that because I understand that I’m just an edit away from it being so much better. Meanwhile, I’m incredibly grateful that I somehow haven’t lost the music-fan super-enthusiasm of my youth.
And I no longer need music as a way to shore up my sense of self. I’m open to almost every kind of music minus guilt or peer pressure. Taylor Swift’s re-recording of “Red”? A Mongolian black metal folk group? Lou Reed and Metallica’s widely-despised “Lulu”? I love them all and I’m again grateful I can hear what I might have once dismissed.
What is difficult about being your age?
To be blunt, death. As in treasured people dying. Especially by suicide, something that over-plagues people in the arts.
Aimee Mann has this remarkable new song called “Suicide is Murder.” While that might sound unforgivingly harsh at first, she’s right. When my life-long best friend Gary committed suicide a year and a half ago, he killed someone I loved so much. And it’s hard not to blame myself for not seeing the signs.
Suicide isn’t age-specific. One brilliant peer killed herself when she was 44. Another when he was 32. Another when he was 28. (If you’re reading this and feeling on the edge, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255.)
Meanwhile, both my parents are slowly dying of Alzheimer’s. And cancer killed two friends this year alone. The longer you live, the more the beloved pass away. Compared to all that, aging’s occasional low energy, the culturally accepted scourge of ageism and sundry insults to our vanity are ultimately seriously small beans.
I’ve always been on the look-out for any sign of nostalgia. The film “Dune” says that “Fear is the mind killer.” I’d say nostalgia is the art-killer.
What is surprising about being your age, or different from what you expected, based on what you were told?
Nothing is all that surprising, really, maybe because I honestly never gave it much thought. But, okay, there’s this: I’ve always been on the look-out for any sign of nostalgia. The film “Dune” says that “Fear is the mind killer.” I’d say nostalgia is the art-killer. It’s a time machine that only goes one way, lying when it says things were so much better back in the day. Nostalgia steals the joy of the new and/or unfamiliar. Avoid at all costs!
What has aging given you? Taken away from you?
It’s given me that incredible relationship I mentioned. It’s given me a total disinclination to trying to Twitter-fight people pointlessly or argue about whether or not Lady Gaga is a great musician or a great pretender. (She’s both!) But more than anything, aging gives me context.
I’ve had so many years stolen by injury and illness and—I keep coming back to this word—I’m so grateful when that doesn’t happen. And all the failed relationships give me the context that makes me treasure my current, almost ridiculously healthy one.
The biggest thing taken away from me by time and its effect on biology is the fact that, as of now, I cannot look forward to a day without severe neurological and/or migraine pain. I’ve learned that a human brain is sort of like a boat: you break the hull, you can fix it, but it will never have the same structural integrity, there will always be leaks that ache.
How has getting older affected your sense of yourself, or your identity?
Much of my identity was once wrapped up in writing thousands of words a week, week-in, week-out I just don’t have the manic-energy for that level of over-production at 65. On the upside, this means I pay more attention to the quality of what I’m writing now, as opposed to judging my work/myself in terms of sheer volume.
Meanwhile, I’ve been obsessed with fashion since junior high but find myself unsure how to “present” myself now. Which stylish item will make me instead look like a walking mid-life crisis? Will this oxblood-brown, All Saints moto be my version of a red Porsche? There’s just no guide for men aside from not wanting to be caught in Dad jeans. But even this is a hidden present: you’re not a slave to cool, you get to design your own notion of what a suave sixty-fiver looks like!
My aging idol is Charlotte Rampling, who’s downright heroic in the way she’s shown that even in an intrinsically misogynist, sexist, and agist industry, that victory over time isn’t about hopelessly trying to deny time’s effects, but to incorporate them into a singular sense of elegance and from that, power.
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?
Back to the effects of my bus accident, still in progress: my music career as a songwriter, performer and producer was peaking when that bus obliterated whatever momentum I’d accrued after fifteen years of hustling, touring, recording, etc.
What has been your favorite age so far, and why? Would you go back to this age if you could?
I sometimes catch myself gold-leafing 39 and 55, 39 because it was the year my first book was published and 55 because it was when I had my own weekly magazine column, enjoyed my work being syndicated worldwide, my short fiction in fancy magazines and anthologies, etc. Then the newspaper industry—my base—collapsed and so it goes.
Is there someone who is older than you, who makes growing older inspiring to you? Who is your aging idol and why?
My aging idol is Charlotte Rampling, who’s downright heroic in the way she’s shown that even in an intrinsically misogynist, sexist, and agist industry, that victory over time isn’t about hopelessly trying to deny time’s effects, but to incorporate them into a singular sense of elegance and from that, power. She’s about 27 and scintillating in the very silly Zardoz, and even more charismatically singular at 75 in Dune.
I’ve been obsessed with fashion since junior high but find myself unsure how to “present” myself now. Which stylish item will make me instead look like a walking mid-life crisis?
What aging-related adjustments have you recently made, style-wise, beauty-wise, health-wise?
As with everyone else, the pandemic wrecked habit with my self-care regimen. For the last few decades, I’ve hit the gym at least three times per week. But since COVID, nada. And I’ve piled on twenty-five unsightly pounds in two years.
But as I still don’t trust gyms, I have been losing weight courtesy a friend’s fasting diet and home work-outs.
What’s an aging-related adjustment you refuse to make, and why?
Any cosmetic surgery or procedures. For what it costs to make my lips more pillowy, my slightly puffy eyes firmer, I could buy my partner two trips to Paris!
What’s your philosophy on celebrating birthdays as an adult? How do you celebrate yours?
If we’re talking my partner’s birthday, I love going all-out. But for me they’ve just never been that big a deal. As McCartney sang, “It’s just another day”.
Loved this beautiful and clear-eyed reflection on aging with long-term disabilities and chronic pain, that doesn't sugarcoat (or catastrophize) the harder parts, and glows with tenderness and joy about the happier parts.
Ian, I love the black shirt in the top photo and the color in your hair to match, just sayin’, for what it’s worth. I’m 77, just published a trans love story so there ya go…. Yeah, I think about death but then, “there is someone out there with a wound in the exact shape of your words” Sean Thomas Dougherty. Carry on — Trish McDonald