By the time we move into our second act, we experience a great deal of loss, from our hair to our best friends, our second act seems like one long season of goodbyes. We lose mobility, we lose motivation and we certainly have lost our beach-ready body. How then can art help mitigate what, on a rainy afternoon, seems like a long season of perpetual goodbyes?
Art can help us explore what we gained as we inhabit our second act. Like:
Ability to Overcome Distraction
If you are immersed in an artistic project, art will come first, before all the tantalizing time wasting distractions available to us. Define a good day as one where you spent at least 15 minutes making art instead of wasting fifteen minutes on Facebook.
Gaining Increased Memory
Practicing art, just the doing of it, painting, sculpturing, music, writing, dance, all contribute to expanding our brain capability. The process of learning can even enhance our brain functions by growing new synapses and new patterns. I’m excited about this.
Building a Better Brain
I do not miss my old brain; I like this new one. With age we become more compassionate, less self conscious; more outward thinking; less concerned with sucking in our stomachs. This new consciousness is exactly what will help us better understand and express our art.
Exchanging Interesting Cocktail Conversation
Remember not too long ago when the first question a stranger asked during a Chamber of Commerce meet and greet, trade show, after hours drinks, or when the most terrifying of your in-laws turned to you during Thanksgiving dinner and loudly asked, “So what do you do?”
And what you do better pay. In our culture, a person’s job, what they did for income was the fastest, easiest way to categorize people. And we must categorize people because our brains and cognitive bias demand it. We don’t even question the ask – we obediently deliver the right answer: I work at Smith, Smith and Anvil as a part-time junior assistant attorney. Sometimes the questioner is impressed and sometimes, if you are lucky, they have no clue what your title means, or what the company you work for makes (common in Silicon Valley and Seattle). And if you are very lucky, the questioner wanders off, more confused than when he or she first asked the question.
What to you say now?
First, you no longer need to make small talk if you don’t want to. And you no longer need to attend Chamber events. And it’s your turn to be the terrifying in-law (I play the terrifying aunt. It’s fun.) That doesn’t mean you won’t get the question again. “What do you do?”
You can be funny, “I spend most of my day avoiding falls”.
You can default to your last paid gig. “I am a retired teacher, programer, company president.”
But that fall-back will start feeling a bit retro, too much like you are someone with a tight grip on their past, unable to define yourself in any new way. Which, by the way, makes you look old.
Instead, you can answer the question, what do you do, with: I create abstract paintings that reflect the disruption of native people along the five-county watersheds in response to the recent art show in conjunction with the local Wild and Scenic Film Festival. What are you working on?
You may have “lost” the job, but you gained being able to change the conversation. Start it yourself. “What are you working on?”
“What is your current passion project?”
“Have you ever written a poem?”
Sure beats wasting fifteen minutes discussing private health care options.
New Fashion Expression
Once retired, you’ve suddenly lost the place to wear your uniform. Banker, baker or candlestick maker, all jobs have a uniform, either mandatory or by unwritten norms.
And now that you’ve moved on from candle sticking making, what is your new uniform? What is your fashion identity?
You may have just joined up with a cult, er, community concert band. What do band members wear?
You may have just experienced a wonderful writing conference. What do writers wear?
You may have just danced in your first dance festival. What do dancers wear?
You have decided to embrace your inner painter. What do you wear to your first painting session?
For me, belly dancing has offered far more interesting style tips than what I observed at writers conferences. Writers are fashionably conservative, we often default to comfortable jeans and oversized college logo sweatshirts or a tee from a prestigious writing conference or festival. But Belly Dancing? The earrings in my collection have grown to massive shoulder brushing proportions. I own bright colored eye shadows and I now attend parties with dress codes involving sequins and three foot high wigs (mine is blue).
Allow your hobbies and art to influence your style. Think of the older artists we admire, or the style mavens on social media. Why not go big? Why not wear the hat, buy the dangly earrings (the light ones), apply makeup, maybe for the first time (if your are male, this may definitely be the first time, but why not?) Or wear your beatnik sweatshirt as a badge of your art, decorated with splatters of paint, clay or both.
My friend Hank is a found object artist. His new uniform is worn jeans and a tee shirt festooned with burn holes. He doesn’t care, and his partner has just given up getting Hank to change before an event. But he does look like an artist.
This is your chance to either level up and be the expressive artistic diva you never knew you wanted to be, or you can wander the Safeway aisles dressed in your worst because you swear you just dashed out from the studio to pick up milk, and never dreamed you’d meet anyone you know at 10:00 on a Tuesday morning.
But of course you do meet an acquaintance. And just your luck, it’s Phyllis, concurrently president of both the DAR and Ladies Relief Society, a formidable local personality, Yikes! She greets you with feigned surprise at your sweatshirt clad form and politely inquires, “Melinda, how are you?”
You answer:
1. I just returned from my 7th doctors appointment today and let me tell you that tiny creak in my knee may be something serious and unpronounceable. I’m currently organizing the month around this odd health blimp, I have a catalogue of things I can ’t do, and another Costco receipt length list of medication which will trigger reactions that necessitate more medical intervention and more doctor visits. Sigh, it’s so hard getting older.
2. I am great. Knee is acting up, so instead of my hike, I sat in the back yard and drew the flowers in the garden.
No judgement – your choice.
For more – check out the full story Take Up Space – Art is Your Second Act.
