Most creative people are more productive when they're young than when they're old.
There are exceptions. Picasso, Vonnegut, and David Byrne, for example. I suppose Dylan's been decent in old age (though it's hard to argue he's as productive as he was as a youngster). But there are more examples to the contrary. It appears true in music: Paul McCartney, the Who, the Kinks, Neil Young. The icons of the 60s and 70s aren't producing music in the
Literature is more debatable. Hemingway and Fitzgerald peaked young. Henry James and Frost got better as they got older.
My instinct is that the change is not physiological, but social. Namely, is it not akin to learning foreign languages - in that if you don't do it when you're young it's difficult to acquire in old age. But rather, by their 30s, most struggling artists have given up their desired craft for more stable pursuits. And successful artists lose the motivation that made them artists: social isolation and lack of recognition.
The vast majority of aspiring artists either sell out or you acquire acceptance. Neither is conducive to further creative self discovery.
I have perpetual fear of creatively "losing it" as I get older.
ReplyDeleteThough somewhere, someway, I heard a study that says that part of the creative-falloff phenomenon is to do with when one starts something. Like, everyone has about ten years of good *something* in them, and if they start at 18, they might indeed dry up at 28.
(Actually ten years is probably far too cruel a number, maybe it's more like 20 or 25.)
But if you don't start painting until you're 38, you could still produce some brilliant shizzle into your 50s.
That's a comforting theory, if it's true.
I like that. But it's a tough thing to measure. First, you have to define creativity, and then you have to acquire objective ways of measuring it. It's like arguing with silly putty. Fun, perhaps, but difficult to know who wins.
ReplyDeletePart of me wonders if rock stars lose their mojo in their later years along with their libidos. Music and fame are just alternative mating strategies, and immensely successful, but only if you hit it big. Once you do, you spread your seed all over the damned place, and, well, mission accomplished. In old age, that crap doesn't matter as much any more.
That sounds about right. A more generalized version of the same theory is that great art is borne of some kind of deep longing or lack or dissatisfaction in the mind/heart/soul of the artist. The great art leads to success, the success allows people to find the satisfaction and contentment they were longing for, and the great-art-making ceases.
ReplyDeleteIt's why people hate Yoko Ono. "How dare you make John Lennon happy?!?!? BITCH!!!"
That, and they blame her for breaking up the Beatles. Personally, I just like to listen to the Long and Winding Road, turn up the bass line and count the number of wrong notes John played.
ReplyDeleteI guess there is that. Same thing, though, right? Yoko comes in, John gets happy, decides he's too old for this Beatles sh*t, doesn't bother to learn his bass parts, and it all comes unraveled.
ReplyDeleteI think it was a bit more conscious than that. I think he thought the song was ridiculously overwrought and just flat out tried to sabotage the damned thing.
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