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I saw Ricki Lee Jones recently, one of the few singers I'll still actually shell out money and tolerate a crowd to see. It had been almost fifteen years since I'd seen her last, a whole world ago when I was still running with all the beautiful people in L.A. She played an invite-only show at The Whiskey and she was everything I wanted to be--beautiful and fierce, unapologetic in her delivery, unafraid of being vulnerable in front of strangers. I loved her before that night, but afterward I loved her with a profound fan girl heart that made me giddy about seeing her even a decade and a half later.
She came out and I was taken aback for a few minutes at how changed she was physically. My first thought was, "Holy shit! She's old!"
She was heavier, and her face had the lines of any other woman her age who hasn't gone under the knife in some way. Still, she was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. She was still everything I want to be--beautiful and fierce, weathered a bit but laughing and peaceful to be where and who she was. She's ten years older than me and I couldn't help but see the changes in her as a vision of what I will face in the not-to-distant future.
Getting older is only surpassed in weirdness by watching other people do it before you. What I saw the other night, though, set me at ease about it. In fact, it made me hope that I can be so lucky--to have a face that becomes more transparent with age, to have a face that lets the world know my spirit is steadily finding its way to the surface.
She came out and I was taken aback for a few minutes at how changed she was physically. My first thought was, "Holy shit! She's old!"
She was heavier, and her face had the lines of any other woman her age who hasn't gone under the knife in some way. Still, she was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. She was still everything I want to be--beautiful and fierce, weathered a bit but laughing and peaceful to be where and who she was. She's ten years older than me and I couldn't help but see the changes in her as a vision of what I will face in the not-to-distant future.
Getting older is only surpassed in weirdness by watching other people do it before you. What I saw the other night, though, set me at ease about it. In fact, it made me hope that I can be so lucky--to have a face that becomes more transparent with age, to have a face that lets the world know my spirit is steadily finding its way to the surface.
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serendipitously, i was thinking about this yesterday
I like the idea of aging because it seems to me that self-actualization or even an approximation of it is absolutely impossible in youth. It's easier to be beautiful when you're free to say screw beauty! and embrace wrinkles and grey hair and everything else that we only fear because we fear mortality.
One of my first memories of you is an entry in which you referred to an ass you had once possessed, an ass that could "stop traffic" as I recall. I thought (at eleven or twelve, before I understood how asses work) that would probably be a terrible burden. I imagined catastrophic accidents, cars and buses and trucks piling up in a fiery wreck. And all because of an ass! Ergo, capital-B Beauty leads to pain and suffering or at the very least gridlock. Give me wrinkles any day.
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that is so beautiful!
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What are you and the boys up to this spring??