The Brooklyn Rail

Bette Davis famously asserted, “Getting old is not for sissies,” but from my philosophical perch, getting old IS for sissies, for the craven as well as the brave. No choice. Aging clarifies, straightens priorities, concentrates the mind. On good days it grants a deep acceptance, in Buddhist terms, “cutting the expectation for a cure.” In my late thirties I wrote, “We spend our lives waiting—to be rescued, to be killed.” At nearly seventy-four, I know there will be no rescue, pace our sad shared fantasies of posthumous glory. Age has revealed my true nature to me—what is in my ken and beyond. I try not to fret as much about my limitations or eccentricities.

At the beginning of my adult life, in my twenties, I agonized over the decision to be an artist, clear-eyed about the difficulties. And then, out of nowhere, came the unintended, subconscious prompt: “Do it. It will be a gift to you in your old age.” And—amazingly—so it is. I now see there never was a choice. Any other career would have required what Susan Sontag called “living beyond my psychological means.” So—another gift of age—no regrets.

Czesław Miłosz at ninety “felt a door opening . . . and entered the clarity of early morning.” I care a bit less what people think. The expectations, judgments and values of the professional world haven’t disappeared, but they have receded. For one thing, lifetime experience eventually hammers into your resistant head that no amount of attention will be enough. As one of Salman Rushdie’s characters observes about artistic types, “they are in mourning from the day they are born, and they all die of sadness because nobody can ever love them enough to satisfy them.” Am I capable of reaching a higher ground?

It’s commonly accepted that one slows down with age. I read somewhere that slowness is a form of holiness. It certainly enhances the present moment. The studio has always been a refuge. Now it is virtually a sanctuary. I embrace a kind of meandering; l let the work tell me what it wants. Precarity reigns. Blind to consequences, the sculpture becomes more anomalous, weirder, reckless even. Or so I am told. Maybe age increases Keats’s “negative capability.” What emerges emerges. Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke. Besides, in a race with my own mortality—if not now, then when? Slow and steady, yes, all the while knowing that in the ultimate race against personal extinction not even a steadfast tortoise can win life’s race.

I have also taken to slowing down literally—consciously moving in slow motion, as though in a film. Not easy for a jumper-to-conclusions, an accomplished catastrophist. I feel process more acutely, untethered from outcome. I notice more. Crystal-clear solutions suddenly arise out of the gluey movements of slowness. I savor the sorting and piling, the ritual laying out of tools: the many spoons, stirrers and measuring cups for casting in rubber, the setting up of scales, the cutting up of dried rubber residue into small pieces, the dumping of these into a box, and the pouring of miscalculated excess liquid rubber over them to net, eventually, a solid cube of recycled rubber. Waste not want not. Using it all up. Coming full circle.

Circling back to themes. For those artists whose path has been discursive, associative, aging enables you to see recurring patterns in your work, as you pick up old threads, rework and integrate these into newer ones. Time reveals the emotional and formal armature of your life’s project, just as in old age the skeleton starts to show through the skin.

Speaking of the body, physical disabilities naturally arise. Sculpture is an especially strenuous medium. Scoliosis has meant chronic backaches. Now, every thirty minutes of work requires ten minutes of lying down flat. This turns out to be a boon, because during those ten minutes, I visualize the next step. Oddly enough, a day punctuated by moments of enforced rest means I can actually work longer. Problems solved mentally save time by minimizing the burnout from pushing too hard.

We all know myriad examples of enhanced creativity with aging artists: Rembrandt’s profound introspection, Matisse’s radical simplifying, and so on. But there is another aspect. At ninety-four, Stanley Kunitz averred that his “spirit remains young. It’s the same spirit I remember living with during my childhood.” For me, a respite from the hurly-burly, given my tendency to meander, resurrects the sense of play I enjoyed as a child, alone at home, while my mother worked and my dad slept off his night shift. I felt free as I played.

Play has no ulterior motive, no audience. It’s a child’s prerogative without rules. “A second childhood” for an artist can mean a return to this blissful state: inventive, non-transactional, unconcerned with any reward, lost in pleasure. Such work is a hoarded treasure, agleam in the gloaming of the inevitable losses of advancing years. How lucky. Making art is world-building. And after fifty years, the world I’ve built is my true home.