I’ve discovered the secret of growing old—subtlety. As I get older I find myself starting to really appreciate the shades of meaning in everything around me from art to architecture to music. Especially music. Truly great artists or groups that I may have appreciated only superficially before—Mozart, Radiohead, Frank Sinatra, John Coltrane—I’m now beginning to appreciate with more depth. What’s beautiful about great art, in any form, is that everyone can appreciate it on different levels. At a symphony concert you might have some people just enjoying the atmosphere and letting the music wash over them, you might have a critic listening and comparing it to past performances of the same piece, you might have a musician listening intently to one voice, or you might have a composer listening to the intricacies on how everything fits together, point and counterpoint. Each is perfectly valid, and I think that each can enjoy the music equally, regardless of intellectual depth. By that same token I think younger performers who may be incredibly advanced technically oftentimes lack a depth of emotion that seems to only come with age; this is particularly apparent in jazz.

It’s not just applicable to art either, you could say the same thing about relationships, almost anything. Do any older more experienced people have thoughts on this? (Old = older than me) 🙂