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Let me see if I can get to the bottom of this here…
It's complicated, weird, and very cooky.
This week I lectured to the Lincoln British Dental Association group. In fact, as I write this blog, it was last night.
I presented a lecture that I'd shown to them 20 years ago, with a picture of myself as an introduction, with hair that was brown and a face, well, that was 20 years ago. I complained throughout the lecture about how old I was and then heard myself complaining about how old I was, and had to tell myself to stop.
Clearly, I've reached a threshold, a turning point, a crossroads, or something or other.
The next thing I was in the doctor's waiting room the following day. That's another thing about getting old, isn't it? Is that you end up at the doctor's for various things.
Apparently, and particularly in Glasgow, the age between 50 and 60 is Sniper's Alley, but really, you're just dodging bullets hoping to get to 60.
While I was in the doctor's waiting room, there was a little radio playing and Phil Collins ‘you can't hurry love’ came on. I was catapulted back 40 years. I was catapulted back to Live Aid. I was catapulted back to Phil Collins, performing in London, and then getting aboard Concorde, and then flying to Philadelphia and performing there.
And so, while I was waiting for my delayed doctor's appointment, I decided to Google the to perplexity what's happening with Phil Collins now (I had no idea).
Apparently, he provided his last performance Gig with Genesis in 2022, while seated because he cannot stand. He had some sort of spinal surgery, he's now having knee surgery, and in a recent interview in New York, he said he was “very sick” and had no desire to perform or to create or to provide any form of entertainment.
Bizarrely, that tied in with my thoughts about being old and the picture in the BDA lecture. I kind of came to that thought in ‘if Phil Collins is old, Christ, that must be ancient’.
It comes to all of us this, doesn't it? Obviously. It's a well-trodden path, well-written about.
It's what you do with it next, isn't it? It's what you do with the time and the health and the motivation and the creativity and the inspiration that you have.
It must be now about ringing out as much of that as I can until I'm Phil Collins.
A long-stated aim to work till I'm 85, Phil never made it. What right do I have to make it?
I have to work hard. To keep myself in a state that allows me to continue to contribute.
Maybe that's the work now, maybe that's the best way to not go quietly into the dark night.
Blog Post Number - 4322
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