People like to ask what I do every day now that I’m retired. It’s a hard question to answer because I do a lot of things that fascinate me but would sound like a complete waste of time for nearly everyone else.
I do stuff around the house, I write, I watch a little TV, and I nearly always take a nap with the dogs. But you know what I love most? Thinking. It’s something I haven’t had time to enjoy for most of my adult life. It’s the ultimate indulgence.
“Sometimes I sits and thinks and sometimes I just sits.” – A.A. Milne (Winnie the Pooh)
What amazes me about getting old is the constant revelations of things I never gave much thought to.
Sometimes those revelations only create more and much bigger questions. Physics, for example: the construction and meaning of life. I’ve always been as curious as everyone but shrugged it off as unknowable, and what the hell, let’s order another drink. But recently, as I approach what we all assume will be the end of our existence, it has become a fascinating focus of my curiosity.
Who am/was I and why?
I want to soak up as much information as I can before it all becomes irrelevant.
The last couple of days I’ve been listening to a Lex Fridman podcast in which he talks with astrobiologist and theoretical physicist, Sara Walker. She’s one of those people with an IQ that’s off the charts. People who make the charts don’t know what to do with her. Lex keeps up with her pretty well but I get lost in nearly every exchange.
My progress is slow, the podcast is long. I feel stupid. I don’t know what I’ll take from it when I’ve reached the end but I do know it fascinates me.
I would be content to live retired without much mental stimulation. I love my wife, our dogs, our home, and our family and friends. I enjoy old movies and TV shows as much as the next old fat guy. But thinking about things I don’t understand excites me. It sends me down rabbit holes far more entertaining than the old Star Trek episodes I’ve been binging lately.
I think Sara Walker would agree without having a good handle on it herself.
Now that I’m retired from radio I’ve kept busy writing a weekly online column about radio. I get to sleep four hours longer than I used to and I work at home in my sweats but I’m still focused on radio, just from a different perspective. Nothing wrong with that but I want to expand my world so I’ve been exploring some options.
I have been thinking about going back to school. I never graduated college, maybe I should go back and be the one old fart in every class. Still mulling that over.
Writing fiction is my passion and though I can string words together nicely I don’t know anything about the craft. I wish I had gotten a writing degree when I was young but I didn’t. Now I’m looking into some online classes but they’re expensive. And what I do know from my experience is that in the end you still have to be willing to do the work. I’ve been mulling that over for decades.
The other thing I would love to do is act. I did plays onstage for 20+ years when I was much younger. At the time, when castmates of my age were trying to get professional acting careers started I said, “I’m going to wait until I’m old. You see the same old people in movies and on TV all the time. There aren’t many of them. I’ll wait until the competition is dying. ”
TV character actor Bert Mustin, 1884-1977. We saw him everywhere.
I have arrived. No, not as a professional actor, I have arrived at old.
I signed up for a free subscription to a casting call website for actors. Some of the jobs are unpaid, and some claim to pay very well. They all describe the actors they’re looking for, mostly young people. Over 50 is rare and calls for actors over 70 are nonexistent. That’s fine, I never expected to burst into Hollywood in a leading role at 72. I figured background acting (still referred to as “extras” if we’re honest) and maybe a sentence or two here and there would be great fun.
But here’s what dawned on me this morning as I was looking at the casting notices and writing courses:
Creativity is imagined to be a young person’s ability. All the websites I’ve looked at for writing courses feature pictures of happy young college types. Casting notices are the same. For some reason, our society assumes brains wither as bodies age.
Years ago in my 40s and 50s, I entered some playwriting competitions and was incensed to find contest entries restricted to “young playwrights”. Some actually specified “under 30”, or words to that effect. It pissed me off, and rightly so. I just lied about my age. It’s none of their business, right? I don’t have an expiration date.
Not incidentally, I won four of the half-dozen playwriting contests I entered.
(Paul McCartney, now 81, was asked ten years ago if he shouldn’t consider getting off the stage and letting younger performers have their place in the spotlight. “Fuck ’em,” he replied. “Let them work their way up like I did.”)
Here’s my point, and I think this may surprise you because I’ve written several ageism rants in this blog over the years. That, in itself, makes the point: I’m still learning and so will you.
I have gotten to an age where I don’t think ageism is a big deal. It’s a state of mind based on the perspective of the observer. It’s normal and natural, and sometimes it is reasonable and warranted.
I can’t portray a man in his 40s no matter how much time I spend in makeup. I’ve talked about this recently on the radio, about radio. You can’t hire a 60-year-old on-air personality for a Hot AC music station, you just can’t. 30 years is a lifetime. Inevitably the old guy is going to impart some of his life’s lessons into his shtick. Just as inevitably, the young audience will roll their eyes and say, “Okay, Boomer.”
This is how life works. When we’re young we think old people are stupid because they’re old. Old people think young people are stupid because they’re too young to know what they’re talking about.
They’re both right.
I understand the need for laws banning hiring discrimination of all kinds but you can’t legislate reality. Life experience and perspective can’t be ignored. It’s the result of personal growth through aging. It’s what keeps us fascinated by learning and passionate about life.
I’m a fat old fart looking for a TV or movie walk-on. Hell, I can even deliver lines believably.
But don’t tell me I’m too old to write. I’ll kick your young playwriting ass.
Man, I’ve written a lot of philosophical tripe recently about aging, retiring, and now, dying. I suppose it’s only natural but I’m getting tired of it. Life is for living, not preparing to die.
The targeted ads are getting annoying.
Facebook targeted ad
So, listen up – I’m only going to say this once:
Whatever becomes of my “remains” when I die is not my concern. That may sound like I’m just kicking the can (along with the bucket) down to my survivors but look, it’s a pass. Don’t worry about it. I don’t. I’ll try to leave behind enough money to pay for the, ahem, cremation procedure (which is something I really don’t want to think about) but after that, do whatever you will with the ashes.
The ashes. Not my ashes.
Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there. I do not sleep…
— Mary Elizabeth Frye
I used to have a grand plan that I told my family: to scatter the ashes in my beloved hometown of Sacramento. Specifically, I told them, sprinkle my earthly remains into the water where the Sacramento and American Rivers meet, just off Discovery Point. My grandpa Webster used to take us fishing there and it’s just upstream from Old Sacramento, where I spent many happy jazz festival days and nights as a young adult.
I told my wife and kids that it would be fitting if a four-piece traditional jazz ensemble played on the shore, perhaps a lively, Dixiesque rendition of the traditional Christian hymn, “A Closer Walk With Thee”.
Or maybe, “Another One Bites the Dust.”
Whatever. I’ll leave that up to you and the band.
That was my thinking years ago when I was still alive in my hometown and a regular, semi-celebrity fixture at the annual Sacramento Dixieland Jazz Jubilee.
Imagining the picture of my grieving family huddled together in a small boat under the cover of darkness (scattering ashes in a river is illegal in California, as are most innocuous things) brought a happy tear to my eye. But then life its ownself (copyright, the late, great Dan Jenkins) moved us to L.A. and eventually Texas. Meanwhile, the world’s greatest traditional jazz festival was crushed by cultural and political forces that trashed its glorious tradition after first removing the word Dixieland from the title. Thanks to the annual Sacramento Bee shocking photos of old people having fun, traditional jazz was run out of town.
Don’t get me started.
The point is, I don’t want my wife and kids to have to spend time and money fulfilling a silly idea I had years before I was old enough to think about dying in a reasonable way, which I now am.
I respect and admire people whose final wishes are detailed and specific.
Though he never expressed his desires to me, we took my father’s ashes to Green River in southwestern Wyoming, where he fished as a boy. It was a moving experience for us all. And if my family wants to do something similar to celebrate my life, by all means, they should do it.
But don’t do it for me. Do it for you.
CarolAnn, I’m leaving this decision to you. You’re really good at making decisions. Don’t feel compelled to have me in a jar in your bedroom but if that’s what you want, do it.
Hey, if you still have our cat, Corabelle, dump me in the litter box. I think it’s funny! You’ll get a giggle each day when you scoop it.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Live and love your life knowing that I loved mine thanks to you all.
by Dave WilliamsMe in a pensive pose, Bushmills, Northern Ireland, July 6, 2023
I like this picture, but my God I look old.
I’ll turn 72 in a handful of days. I know there are a lot of people older than me who don’t seem to give age a thought but I’m sure they do. How could they not?
Twenty years ago I began to wonder if old people think about dying. I never had the nerve to ask an old person, but now I am one and I’ve got the answer: You bet we do, but not in the way I expected.
The past is a great place and I don’t want to erase it or regret it, but I don’t want to be its prisoner either. – Mick Jagger, just turned 80
I think about dying just as I think about being born — I know nothing about either. I only know everything that has happened in-between. That’s where I live and always have. I wouldn’t change a second of it.
Sacramento’s Stagedoor Comedy Playhouse was my home away from home in the 80s and 90s. For several of those years between marriages, it was my home instead of home.
I was Felix to Dave Grosby’s Oscar in Neil Simon’s “The Odd Couple” Gosh, we were terrific.
I don’t have an exact count but I’d guess I performed in some 20 plays at Stagedoor and directed another ten or so. I wrote a few, too. After each performance, the cast and crew would gather around the beer and wine bar in the lobby and relive the glories and horrors of that night’s show. We drank and laughed while learning the fine points of our craft, of action, reaction and timing, through our shared experience. We kept at it until the wee hours, then reluctantly headed to the parking lot with the happy promise that we’d all get together the next night and do it all again.
I was in my thirties then and thoroughly immersed in my life as a single father and my blossoming radio career. But I still had dreams of a different, distant future.
“When I get old,” I told my theater family, “I’m going to get acting jobs in movies and TV. All the young, hot bodies are fighting for stardom. I’ll wait until they’ve all burned out,” I said. “Then I’ll just scoop up all the old man character roles.”
Remember this old man? Burt Mustin. He was on every big and small screen in the 1950s and 60s.
It was my retirement plan. Seemed like a good idea at the time when TV shows all featured the same two or three old men playing minor roles and window dressing, actors who had been around forever learning technique and aging into the life experience needed for old man character roles.
Forty years have slipped away. I guess it’s time.
I just filled out a form for a casting agency to appear as an extra in a TV series filming in the Fort Worth Stockyards. It’s a prequel to the hit series, “Yellowstone”, called “1883”.
I love Westerns. I’ve eaten dust on horseback.
I loved playing cowboy 60 years ago and I loved being on stage 20 years later. Maybe I’m ready to saddle up again, or just walk down a wood plank sidewalk as a body comes flying through the swinging doors of a saloon.
It didn’t exactly sneak up on me. I’ve thought about that number quite a bit in the past year or more.
“Forty is the old age of youth; fifty, the youth of old age.” – Victor Hugo
I don’t like cheesy wordplay but that probably seemed brilliant three hundred years ago.
Hugo lived to 83. If he said anything about seventy he seems to have kept it to himself, which is wise. At seventy we shouldn’t need to have aging explained to us.
The problem with age is that it pesters us from birth when people begin keeping track of the numbers of days, then weeks and months we’ve lived. We’re taught to celebrate the arbitrary concepts of years and decades past.
We celebrate mere survival more than life itself.
When I turned fifty my father laughed and told me it made him feel old. He was seventy-two and for no good reason at all he died six months later. I hate that I remember this by the numbers.
This obsession we have with age is a cultural curse. It segregates us. It stigmatizes us. Old people are irrelevant; young people are ignorant.
It confuses us as we move from one age box to the next.
So, here’s my birthday wish:
Don’t call me a senior citizen. It’s neither endearing nor insulting, it’s just irrelevant. In fact, don’t refer to me by age at all unless it’s the specific topic of conversation or a good old person joke. I like old people jokes that are funny, not corny or mean.
I’m not ashamed of my age, it just doesn’t matter. I’m no different now than I was at twenty; I’m still living and learning, still loving life and excited about tomorrow.
At seventy, numbers don’t matter.
I’ll be back here ten years from now to let you know if that’s still true.
I find myself wanting to write but having nothing to say.
This COVID-19 business has dominated our every thought and action for the past five or six weeks. Most of us are even having COVID-19 dreams. Some of us are really stressed. Others think its nonsense.
I’m trying to remain vigilant, patient, optimistic.
My daughter-in-law shared this gem from a Russian writer on Facebook this morning. It says everything.
Wise words from Grandma
Grandma once gave me a tip:
Picture by Tasha Burgess Tudor, illustrator of children’s books. (1915-2008)
During difficult times, you move forward in small steps.
Do what you have to do, but little by bit.
Don’t think about the future, not even what might happen tomorrow.
Wash the dishes.
Take off the dust.
Write a letter.
Make some soup.
Do you see?
You are moving forward step by step.
Take a step and stop.
Get some rest.
Compliment yourself.
Take another step.
Then another one.
You won’t notice, but your steps will grow bigger and bigger.
And time will come when you can think about the future without crying.
In case you didn’t get the message it’s “saving,” not “savings” with an “s” at the end. You can’t put daylight or time in a bank to be withdrawn and spent in the future. That would be very cool but it doesn’t work that way. Time doesn’t care who you are, what you think, or how you use the finite number of breaths and heartbeats given to you on this earth. When you’re finished, that’s it. Doesn’t matter what the clock says, your time is up.
Time just marches on, as we say.
Or flies if you’re having fun.
Still, it’s amazing how many intelligent and otherwise reasonable people seem to think that when we turn the clocks back one hour late Saturday night or early Sunday morning they will actually, magically GAIN an honest-to-God hour in their lives. “Yay!” they say, “I get to sleep an extra hour!”
Patiently, I try to explain, “Only if you have to go to church or an appointment. Otherwise, you’ll sleep the same number of hours but the time on the clock will be different, that’s all.”
They don’t want to hear this. For some reason, the fact that they turned the clock back one hour when they went to bed has totally slipped or befuddled their minds.
“No, when I wake up at ten tomorrow morning it will really be eleven!”
And that’s where logic has somehow jumped the rails and turned over in a ditch.
Then there’s ridiculous business about how the time change is hazardous to our health. More car accidents, they claim. For some reason, we’re more likely to have a heart attack. Because of a one-hour clock change? Puh-leeze! It’s no different than if I fly from Dallas to Denver. My phone will adjust the time and I’ll never notice.
My late, beloved Grandma Webster used to put us through our paces on this when we were kids. For days after a time change, she would say, “It’s really nine o’clock. Time for you kids to get in bed.”
“No, Grandma, it really is EIGHT o’clock!” we’d explain. “Look, it says so right on the clock!”
She was undaunted because we were just dumb kids and she was in charge. And, so, we’d have to go to bed an hour early because the world had recently switched to Standard Time. Nevertheless, six months later we’d go through the same routine with her in the opposite direction.
“Why are you kids up so early? It’s really only six in the morning.”
“Grandma, no. It’s SEVEN! See? The clock says so!”
After a while, she’d get her circadian clock in tune with the one on the stove. But it was a struggle to get her there.
And six months later, we’d do it all over again.
But one year my uncles (3 and 4 years older than me) got her back. Grandma fell asleep in front of the TV around 7:00 p.m. The boys changed the clock to read 1:00 a.m. We all got our pajamas on and climbed into bed while one of the brothers changed the TV to a non-working channel full of static and woke her up. She thought it was six hours later than it was, got up out of her chair, turned off the lights and the TV, and went to bed.
She’s hella smart but she’s still young.
