The Older I Get, the Younger I Am

You know, I actually like Ben Folds Five's recent come-back album, "The Sound of the Life of the Mind," and not even for the nostalgia value ("Reinhold Meisner" is unassailable in my opinion). Rather, it's for songs like "Michael Praytor, Thirty Years Later," about friends that randomly drift back into your life every five years or so, without rhyme or reason.

Hearing that song causes me to reflect upon all the good people I've been close to throughout my life, so many of whom are now just people I once knew.  In fact, the process by which certain friends remained close and others didn't has felt like utterly random; I could not have guessed in, say, 2005, whom of my friends I would still be close to today, and which I wouldn't. 

Why do some satellites pass by again, while others disappear?  What is it that causes some friendships to last, while others don't?  Are most relationships purely situational--that is, no matter how honest the friendship, are we only friends with certain people because we work with them or go to school with them, and hence the friendship ends once one or both move on?  What causes some close relationships to transcend situation, while others don't?  These are questions that only resonate with me more as I get older.

It recently struck me that, without even meaning to, the average age of the artists I've been getting into lately has gotten older as I have.

Andrew Bird, Sufjan Stevens, LCD Soundsystem, Iron & Wine, Arcade Fire, TV on the Radio, Animal Collective, Ben Folds, Low--these are all artists in their late-20s or well into their 30s, ones who sing about how "It's been a long, long time" and "Now That I'm Older" (Stevens, "The Age of Adz"); or how "I want a daughter while I'm still young," implying that he soon won't be (Arcade Fire, "The Suburbs"); or how "I Was a Lover" but am not anymore (TV on the Radio); or about catching up with an old friend, of whom "someone told me you're still pretty" (Iron & Wine, "Trapeze Swinger"); or about sons and daughters growing up (Ben Folds, "Still Fighting It" and "Gracie"); or about the all-too-rapid passage of time, and to "get out while you're young" (Low, "July" and "Something's Turning Over"); of how "you spent the first five years trying to get with the plan/and the next five years just trying to be with your friends again," thinking in blocks of years as only 30-something adults can (LCD Soundsystem, "All My Friends"); or how "still my lover won't return to me," and how he slurs together "Souverian" and "so very young/were we..." (Andrew Bird, "Souverian"). 

Contrast that against the music I was into in my early-20s: Jimmy Eat World singing about the emotional trauma of turning "23;" Weezer, Rocket Summer, and All-American Rejects singing about the first throes of young love; the White Stripes scouring all older musical identities to find one of their own (what teenager hasn't had their blessed Classic Rock phase?); early U2, late-period Beach Boys, and Queen all singing about breaking free; Nirvana and Rage Against the Machine enraged about the forces that won't let us; and a full host of other artists singing about young adults navigating the passions of post-adolescence and early adulthood, trying to leave behind childhood and find one's way in this new, wondrous yet overwhelming world. 

And contrast that with the (full, embarrassing disclosure) Green Day, Sublime, Third Eye Blind, Everclear, and Blink-182 I loved as a far-too-self-serious and inexperienced teenager.  (Though, in my defense, I loved Queen and the Beatles with all my heart and soul in High School--and still do).

Yet as deeply and keenly as I remember those passionate stages of my life, they are different from the passions I feel now.

Now, it's not even that I dislike these artists from my college years now, or have even quit listening to them--it's just that they don't resonate with me near as powerfully as they once did. I very belatedly got into the Pixies, and while I enjoy them, I also feel a twinge of regret of not having gotten into them in college, when I suspect they would have moved me far more deeply.  (Same goes for The Who's "Tommy" and "Quadrophenia").


Certainly some music we age into: I remember being bored by U2 in middle-school but loving them in High School; I mostly tolerated my mother's classical music as a teenager, but nowadays I listen to Debussy and Mozart with near-religious devotion.

Nor is it that my new favorite music is all stodgier or slower or sadder--no, the sheer level of experimentation, energy, musicianship, and joie de vivre of some of these older folks is higher than anything I listened to as a kid--or even experienced as a kid.  In fact, I'm prepared to say that the older I am, the younger I get.  I take myself far less seriously, see the world far more brightly, feel more deeply, think more thoroughly, and get out and enjoy myself more, than I ever did as a child.

I've simply been wondering lately what music will continue to resonate with me as I get older.  I will also confess to seeking recommendations; those of you in my age bracket, what music have you been getting into?