The Gero-Punk Project

Something Got Ahold of Me and I Started to Create a Musical Revue on Aging

by Guest Gero-Punk

Gaea Yudron

In 2009, which now seems almost like another lifetime ago, I decided to write a musical revue on aging. The fact that I had never created a musical revue did not dampen my enthusiasm in any way– and to that I say this: sometimes it’s better not to know what you’re getting into or you may never begin. 

What spurred me to urge my horse into this new territory? It was simply this. I find our society’s largely unconscious, unchallenged ageism and gerontophobia completely unacceptable.  I am unwilling to accept the toxic, unreal stereotypes about aging and older adults that pervade media, healthcare, the workplace and community. I felt I had to do something in self defense!

So I made a list of the topics and issues I wanted to cover and set to work writing songs.  The first song I wrote was Passing for Young, which investigates our society’s obsession with acting and appearing young, rather than embracing aging as a natural stage of life. Then I wrote another song titled Baba Yaga’s Raga. Baba Yaga is a rather fierce, magical hag from the tradition of Slavic folklore. She is unconfined by convention, ageless and because she is an archetype, she’s bigger than life. As it turned out, Baba Yaga became the mythsinger for A New Wrinkle. She puts the trials and tribulations ordinary humans in perspective—and she has no qualms about sharing her unique way of looking at the human predicament.

I was surprised about the way that songs began to pour out of me. In fact, it often seemed that there were several of them standing around waiting for me to pay attention to them. When you are a creative type, this is not a bad thing, not at all. The songs poured out.

I wrote Sex after Sixty because I find the stereotype that older adults are sexless rather annoying. Sex after Sixty is a hymn to intimacy, no matter what your age. It has a marvelous, lilting calypso feel, thanks to composer Laura Rich, who has created the entire musical score for the revue.

According to Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Once you make a decision, the Universe conspires to make it happen.” That certainly is true of the way that dear Laura Rich appeared in my life with her considerable musical expertise and her enthusiasm for the pro-aging messages of A New Wrinkle. Thanks to our collaboration over the past 4 years, we now have 20 marvelous songs about various aspects of growing older, with the emphasis on growing. I love all of the songs. It’s like having 20 very different, marvelous children.

The bluegrass song Are You Gonna Take it with You to the Grave? takes a humorous look at long-held grudges and the value of forgiveness. In a song titled Retirement and Refirement the singers explore what to do with this part of life—move to Belize, join the Peace Corps, take to the road in an RV?

Hip Hop Elder’s Rant is a real protest song. In it, Hip Hop rants against marginalization, stigmatizing and other forms of dismissing elders. He is “a righteous sage with a bit of an edge.”

The Silver Tsunami spotlights the global aging phenomenon and how being part of such a huge demographic could make it easy for elders to be a potent force for change. Very politically apt and it is also a very funny song.

I Can’t Remember Shit is a song about Alzheimer’s. I wondered whether I could do a good job on writing a song about Alzheimer’s. I think I did. It’s bittersweet, heartbreaking, and that is appropriate.

Death is Right around the Corner is actually five songs in one. It’s poignant, hilarious and thought-provoking, with Death himself giving some insights on how he thinks about his job.

I wrote Scintillating Secrets of the Older Brain to counter the popular obsession with “senior moments.”  The song investigates the exciting integrative capabilities of the older brain. Why focus on stereotypes about what doesn’t work, when there are wonderful things that do work?

Now, we are very close to finishing the songs, dramatic sketches and monologs that make up A New Wrinkle. We’ll be moving into the next stage: fundraising, promotion and production.  Where and how will that happen? Unless you can read the future, you are as much in the dark about the details as we are. But happen it will.

When I started to create A New Wrinkle, my vision was to entertain, educate and ignite social change. That’s still my vision. I hope that the revue will be produced widely, along with conversation circles, workshops and other activities designed to shift cultural stereotypes about aging and older adults, while encouraging older adults to live into their full potential.

At our website, http://www.sagesplay.com you can read lyrics for many of the songs and hear mp3s of four of them. Of course, we love fans, supporters and people who just can’t wait to see A New Wrinkle on stage in their area. If you qualify for any of those descriptions, please keep in touch with what we are doing. And don’t forget to sign up for our monthly newsletter at the website home page. That is the best way to receive updates.

It feels good to be part of a growing social movement to transform noxious, stuck attitudes about aging. Here’s hoping that in the midst of the silver tsunami we can catalyze positive shifts in the way people think about growing old and the way older people are met in society.

***

Gaea Yudron is director of Sage’s Play, whose programs support creative, conscious aging. Gaea spent 12 years at Medifecta Healthcare Training developing educational materials designed to train caregivers of elders. During that time, Gaea was inspired to create programs that illuminate the growth opportunities possible in the later years. Gaea’s most recent book is Songs of the Inner Life.  A memoir that explores the confluence of inner and outer experience, the book is also an example of life review. Gaea lives in Ashland, Oregon and you can reach her at: gaea@sagesplay.com

As a sort of sweet post-script to the three-part series Fred’s Figs: A Legacy Tale that I’ve offered to you over the past few days, I thought I’d share a little essay I wrote recently on fostering intergenerational friendships. It was just published in the July/August 2013 issue of Aging Today (Vol. xxxiv, no. 4), the bimonthly newspaper of the American Society on Aging. The entire issue is resplendent with wonderful articles on topics ranging from community- building, care giving, and intergenerational workplace issues, to other pieces on friendship in addition to my piece. And if you aren’t familiar with the American Society on Aging, check it out as the ASA is a really great professional organization for folks working in the field of Gerontology. You can find out more at www.asaging.org.

 The title I originally gave to my essay was Singing the same song: Cultivating connections across generations and in its original form the essay exceeded the 800-word limit the editors gave me by about 256 words! (You aren’t really surprised, are you?) But –ta da!– below please find the final version, as published (thank you, kind and skillful editors!).  And thank you to a new colleague, Barbara Meltzer, who invited me to write this essay and was instrumental in helping me talk through its contours (and thank you to my daughter’s aunt, Dr. Francoise Brun-Cottan, who connected me and Barbara in the first place!).  I just love making inter-connections, don’t you?

 Connecting across generations, finding a true friend

 Fred was the angel of our neighborhood, a generous and friendly person. My friendship with Fred was one of truest and closest I’ve had. We were real friends, not just across-the-street neighbors. Fred was first generation Italian American, born in the 1920s, a devoted Catholic, barely graduating high school, veteran of WWII, a stonemason and a widower. I was half his age, a divorced mom with a Ph.D., and with quite a different intellectual, spiritual and political outlook. But we coalesced around organic gardening, home cooking and service to our communities, while beholding one another’s differences with openness and curiosity. We liked spending time together and prioritized doing so. During the growing season you’d find us together in Fred’s garden, puttering, doing chores, gathering ripe offerings.

I knew by how he walked from his house to his garden, months before his final decline, that something essential had changed, that we wouldn’t have another summer of gardening together. He knew by how I walked from my house to my car when I was feeling worn out from a day at work.

How Can Different Generations Befriend One Another?

I have worked in the field of gerontology more than half my life, beginning in my teenage years as a certified nursing assistant. For the past 20 years, I’ve gathered rich experiences not only about later life and adult aging, but also about the complexities of traveling through the life course. For quite some time I have been preoccupied with questions about intergenerational friendships, about how persons of different ages and generations might come together to foster real friendships. There isn’t much in the scholarly literature to inform such relationships.

My youngest friend is 7. Her mother was my former graduate student, and over the past decade we’ve become close friends and colleagues. How do I know that my best friend’s daughter and I are friends in our own right?  Because we want to spend time together, and we have an unspoken understanding about things.  Something wild in her responds to something wild in me.

Another friend is half my age. He came to the United States seeking safety. In his increasingly traditional native country he faced persecution because of his sexuality, religious beliefs and political affiliations. Not only are we at different points along the life course, but also we are about as different from one another as two humans can be. But, despite our many differences, we are on the same wavelength.

These examples are meant to bring out the idea that intergenerational friendships don’t have to be only between children and older adults in controlled, formal settings, like you’d find in a senior center or in intergenerational programming. They exist in all contexts, up and down the generations.

Friendship Requires Vulnerability and Openness

In my “mid-life” I have cultivated friendships with younger and older persons, persons I’ve met in my neighborhood, in my workplace, through happenstance. I’ve not always known how to be a true friend, by which I mean a friend who can be simultaneously vulnerable, curious, open and accepting of another. I came to all of this rather late, and most of what I know I learned from Fred.

We need to reflect on the assumptions we make when we emphasize similarities within, and differences between, generations. It isn’t that there aren’t generational differences (or “cohort effects”), but at least in part they are socially constructed and reductive, and get in the way of meaningful human-to-human interactions.

We should ditch our suspicions around younger and older persons being friends, especially if they are differently gendered or have different sexual orientations. And we need to suspend our suspicions around friendships that begin at work, or through other situations where we’re used to maintaining roles, positions and firm boundaries. Sometimes a relationship begins in one context, and then something new emerges (students and professors become friends; co-workers become friends; a neighbor becomes one of the best friends you’ve ever had).

Such exposure to others, especially if they are different than we are, is essential, starting in childhood and continuing throughout the life course, as mentioned in an article by Gilbert and Ricketts in Educational Gerontology (34:7, 2008; doi: 0.1080/03601270801900420). But exposure isn’t enough. There should be ongoing opportunities to be vulnerable and open ourselves up to discovering and connecting with people of all ages around both shared and different beliefs, concerns and aspirations. We need to risk communicating authentically about our lives, and show our real selves, discovering ways to be mutually supportive, according to Sophie Bowlby in her article in Social & Cultural Geography (12:6, 2011; doi: 10.1080/14649365. 2011.601264), and in Mother Time: Women, Aging, and Ethics, edited by Margaret Urban Walker (1999, Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield).

 I still have more questions than answers. But I know this: Intergenerational friendships are an opportunity to bring our whole selves into relationship, to travel together hand-in-hand for whatever portion of the life course journey we are fortunate to share.

There are strange new sounds coming from Fred’s garden.

I was accustomed to hearing hummingbird. He would perch in the old apple tree on the west side of Fred’s garden and whistle. Sometimes when hummingbird would see me come outside to check on my garden he would zip in his crazy half-invisible way across the street and perch on the telephone lines up above me.

I was accustomed to hearing the modest chattering of bush tits or papa jay squawking at squirrel. If I really listened closely I might also hear the sound of snake sneaking along in the undergrowth or the big bees sipping blossoms.

But once the construction kicked in this past January and there were cars and trucks and heavy equipment every where (and after the trees were removed from the garden) the birds took off.  

It seemed like the construction of the huge new house would never be finished. It seemed like I’d never again hear any sounds from across the street except loud radio music played by various day laborers, or male voices shouting instructions about what’s what, or the sound of a truck engine kept running for half an hour while the foreman talked on his cell phone.

Then — it felt sudden– about a week ago, all of the cars, trucks and heavy equipment finally left.

 And then I began to hear strange new sounds coming from Fred’s garden.

Two mornings ago I heard the baby girl crying inconsolably. It was the day after her family moved into the new huge house that sits atop Fred’s garden. I imagine that she was exhausted from the move, confused about where the hell she was and why her schedule was thrown off, that she was suffering from time/place/space disorientation.

Yesterday morning, I heard one of the little twins repeat over and over from his third floor fortress: “Get out of my room!” At first, it sounded like he was playing but after ten minutes I was pretty certain he meant business.  Understand that he’s never had his own bedroom before now, and he’d only had his own bedroom for two days and nights! I imagine that he (and his twin) must be confused about where the hell they are and why things are different and whether or not they should enjoy the newness. I think he is suffering from time/place/space disorientation, too.

I am suffering from time/place/space distortion as well. But I realized this morning when I looked out my front window at their huge new house that as much as I miss Fred, Fred’s garden and the creatures who dwelled there I am actually quite happy about the new creatures living across the street atop Fred’s garden.

In celebration of the beautiful things that well-loved gardens grown, please accept the last installment of Fred’s Figs: A Legacy Tale.

Fred’s Figs: A Legacy Tale, Part Three (of three parts)

Fred’s car is still in his driveway and seeing it there still catches me by surprise.  As I am coasting down the street, heading home at the end of the day, or when I am backing out of my own driveway on my way out some where, I see his little car – old maroon Honda Civic – and my heart leaps and I think, “Oh, great! Fred’s home!”  In the next moment, I remember that Fred is no longer here in his previous form, that his house, which he lived happily in for decades, is unoccupied, that his car sits unused in the driveway, that weeds are starting to grow up around it through the cracks in the pavement. 

Some times it also happens that very early in the morning, when it is still quite dark, as I’m heading out with Happy-the-dog for a trip to our park for some exercise, I look across the street to see if the light is on in Fred’s kitchen, if he is at the window washing dishes, preparing veggies for soup, or looking out to see if I am up yet. Early in the morning, often before sunrise, I always felt like the two of us, Fred and me, and Happy the dog – and the water fowl at our park – were the only creatures awake in the neighborhood.

Fred’s final decline began during the late fall and intensified in the early winter.  He had experienced months of unexplained recurrent anemia, fatigue and vertigo.  For a few months it was feared that the non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma he’d had previously was back for another round.  But Fred’s team of doctors ruled that out, other cancers, too, and made sure that his diabetes was under control, gave him periodic blood transfusions, and kept a close eye on him. His daughter Joanne or son Peter took turns taking him to various medical appointments throughout the autumn months and into the winter.  The dizziness from the vertigo drove Fred crazy, especially because it prevented him from taking walks through our neighborhood, puttering in his garage or the dormant garden, or jumping into his car in order to visit Peter at his shop or attend mass at Saint Agatha’s. Fred was homebound. If the lights in Fred’s kitchen were on later than I thought was usual, or weren’t on in the early morning when I woke up, I would be worried.

As often as I was able, in those darkening days of 2009, I’d pay an evening visit to Fred, dropping by for a chat, sometimes with some homemade soup to offer him (“Could you use some lentil soup, Fred?” borrowing his favorite phrase of generosity.).  Because of his diabetes and my chronic intestinal condition we ate virtually the same plant-based, whole-foods diet, so we took pleasure in giving each other homemade treats, especially if the ingredients came from Fred’s garden. During these visits, or on the phone when I was unable to stop in, he’d tell me about his day, how he was feeling, the results of a medical appointment, reminiscences about the old country, or last summer’s tomatoes, or what not.  And he’d ask me about my day, or he’d wonder after Isobel, so I’d tell him highlights, mostly having to do with what was happening at the park, or on the political scene, or I’d describe in great detail some fantastic recipe Izzy and I made or planned to make soon.

Fred was fortunate that he had a couple of short periods where he felt stable enough – not too wobbly and weak – and so was able to leave his home not just for medical appointments or a transfusion, but for Sunday dinner with his family, or for a short cane-assisted walk around the block. But the overall trajectory for his embodiment was downward, back toward the earth.

I still have Fred’s phone number in my cell phone contact list – and, along with his, under his entry, I have his son Peter’s and daughter Joanne’s numbers as well, leftovers from the time when Fred was in his physical decline, contact numbers “In case of an emergency.” But now Joanne and Peter have their own entries in my contact list.  Peter and I occasionally text-message to check in about coordinating our time and tasks in the garden.  Joanne calls to let me know what’s growing at her farm or to find out if I could use some fresh eggs or green garlic.  On Fred’s birthday, September 1^st, that first year after his death the three of us exchanged messages to affirm our devotion to Fred and to each other.  I realize how fortunate I am – and how it is far from inevitable, it didn’t have to happen this way – that in addition to knowing Fred, I have the opportunity to know his adult children as well, to work with them to carry forward Fred’s legacy. To know them is to continue to know Fred.

My relationship with Fred is undoubtedly based in part on memories of our past experiences, the things we did for or with each other.  But there’s something even more significant going on: Fred was – is – one of the best and truest friends I’ve ever had, and so I continue to have a great deal of space in my mind for remembering him, and obviously I feel moved to tell and write stories of him, as a way to keep him alive. But – and this is so important and yet I’m struggling to match my experiences with words and thus communicate with others about my experience  — my relationship with Fred exists in the present, in the unfolding of my daily life, and I feel quite certain that we are still cultivating our relationship, though we exist on two different layers of reality. That he is still alive for me, still a central part of my daily life, that I actually have an active relationship with him is a beautiful, perplexing phenomenon.