The passing of my mother last month, along with a lengthening list of infirmities i am in the process of accumulating has led to contemplations of mortality. When you start thinking you may not be around when the Social Security trust fund is exhausted in the early 2030s, it is time to take stock. Like many in the Boomer generation, music is one of the ways I have marked significant milestones. Coming of age during the late 60s during the heyday of Dylan, the Beatles and the Stones, there were plenty of songs more or less apropo to my circumstances. However, one singer/songwriter more than any other expressed the melancholy of aging in a way that appealed to my teenage and later, my adult sensibilities.
Paul Simon is almost exactly 10 years older than me and has consistently explored the themes of aging in a youth oriented society. From "A Hazy Shade of Winter" to "Old Friends" and finally to "Old", Simon is alternately stridently opposed to aging to coming to terms with it ("How terribly strange to be 70") to finally playful in Old (" God is old, we're not old"). I guess it's not very original to say the term, old, is extremely relative. Not sure where this is going, but it's meant to be a short meditation on the process of aging, not a depressing rant on a Monday morning.
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