Lessons from artists and thinkers.
The Longest Lives
A special issue listening to the very old.
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What do more years on Earth add up to?
Wisdom, maybe, or at least lessons in what went right or, occasionally, very wrong.
AtNew YorkMagazine, weve spent time recently reflecting on the value of age and what comes of it.
If they can break that barrier of fear, they can be organizers.
My teacher in organizing was an old-school gentleman named Fred Ross Sr.
This was in Stockton, California.
He changed my entire life.
Our organization was pro-gay, pro-choice.
After that, he actually had a Mass for my birthday.
So people can change.
We started the national grape boycott with house meetings, getting people to invite us to their homes.
In Grand Central station, we passed out 25,000 leaflets every single day.
This was one of the big areas where Cesar Chavez and I had a difference of opinion.
The company we were up against, it grew oranges, potatoes, and grapes.
He wanted to boycott potatoes, and we had this big argument.
I said, When people think of potatoes, they think of Idaho, not California.
Chavez and I both believed in nonviolence in grassroots organizing, but we differed a lot in strategy.
I think its the difference in the way women and men think.
Women, we avoid conflict, and in doing that, we dont really fight for our position.
It resulted in a death of a worker, who was killed by the employers.
Also, a lot of us women worry about our looks.
Of course, thats really important when youre younger.
Even the womens marches, how quickly people can be brought together.
Were going to be going into the elections in November registering people to vote virtually.
The message can be spread so quickly, and thats exciting.
I learned about Ahmaud Arberys death, and the solidarity jog, how many people took part.
That was all virtual.
One negative thing about the online issue, though: You realize that you dont know your neighbors.
I guess weve had social distancing in a different kind of way about relating to our neighbors.
And thats different than when I was young.
When I was young, you knew everybody on the block.
As told to Amelia Schonbek
IntheBeginning,IWasntVeryFlexible.IHadtoLearnThat.
I was so immersed in music that I didnt miss the education I would have gotten.
I do now, but I dont spend sleepless nights thinking about it.
My father was a great musician, and he gave me lots of advice.
So did Hans Swarowski, my conducting teacher in Vienna.
WagnersRingcycle is one of the hardest works to learn its 17 hours of music!
I did the best I could, but in the beginning, I wasnt very flexible.
I had to learn that.
In music, that kind of happens continuously.
There are so many viruses out there in the world.
It was on a whim, a suggestion of my mothers.
What I discovered over that summer was that the forefronts of research were available to me.
I could work on a problem that no one else knew the answer to.
It was a simple problem, not earthshaking in any way, but it was mine.
I then decided thats how I wanted to spend my life.
I had gone into science because I wanted to make a run at understand the behavior of living things.
And every little step is an excitement to me.
Ive never lost that.
Its been a period of 60 years since I first was exposed to scientific questions.
We can now do that at will.
All of that is new.
But at the same time, its the same questions.
We still go back and read Darwin.
The time between the appearance of new viruses is long, relative to the political calendar.
So we dont have the political will to maintain our worry about new viruses over decades.
And yet that is what we have to do.
We have to prepare ourselves for it.
Weve done very poorly in that regard.
I mean, theystruggled, and I saw how hard they worked.
So now I dont play golf!
I speak about my internment experience; I raise awareness.
So the next time youre in Los Angeles, youll come see our subway that we managed to build.
And that night on the radio, we heard about Pearl Harbor and then he went away to war.
Since this COVID-19 has hit, Ive wondered about everything.
About life, death, and America.
I think its the most overwhelmingly shocking event, both metaphysically and politically, that I could have imagined.
Because its so mysterious.
There were terrible things like Vietnam, obviously.
I understand that theres something misguided and terrible in our foreign policy.
With the Kennedy assassination and then MLKs assassination, things started to get very ugly and very complicated.
This thing is terrifying in a different way that I cant put my finger on.
Also the fact that Im old and I know Im at the end.
I dont think Ill live to see how we climb out of this.
Im sure we will, somehow, but I think it will take longer than my life.
And I wont see it.
Ive never felt that before.
When I see words trashed and stepped on by Trump, its very, very, painful.
In the course of my lifetime, Im thinking then we had Roosevelt, and now we have Trump.
But not only that.
In my lifetime, polar bears have become endangered and now almost extinct.
That strikes me as connected.
I think of how lucky I am.
Im in my house right near Long Island Sound, and I take a walk every afternoon.
And Im so struck by birdsong.
They all seem to be talking to each other in wonderful languages I dont understand.
They seem to be signaling that theres another world in the sky.
Yeatss and Stevenss last poems both concerned birds.
The last poem in Stevenss collection is called Not Ideas About the Thing But the Thing Itself.
Its about hearing a birds cry at the earliest ending of winter, in March.
It struck me how that is so literally true about the pandemic.
In March, we had ideas of the thing but not the thing itself.
The thing itself came, slap, later, at the earliest ending of winter.
My mother lived into her early 90s.
Being an energetic, active woman in ones 80s is much more common now.
Im capable of driving and working and taking care of myself.
I love doing tai chi, meditation, yoga, things like that.
But whats sad about this moment is that it isnt the same doing it on Zoom.
I dont know if Ill write another book.
I think the book I just did is probably my last.
I dont have the stamina.
My sense of career ambition is absolutely gone.
He went to bed fine one night and was dead in the morning.
Im more concerned with explaining I dont know what.
I do love to think about certain poets who wrote great work until the ends of their lives.
Thats rare, but Whitman certainly did, and John Ashbery did.
Whitmans late poem A Clear Midnight is so beautiful.
The final line is Night, sleep, death and the stars.
I think about that line as a woman lying down and going to bed at night at 82.
How could you get anything more holy?
ImNotAfraidtoApologize
Actress Rita Moreno, 88
Im in a business where egos are very, very fragile.
And I have learned how to handle people who have problems in the kindest way I can.
And sometimes being kind simply means being very honest and direct.
Im also not afraid to apologize.
Thats a very hard thing for people to learn, especially people who are sensitive and emotional.
Im both of those things, still.
I have learned how to say I was wrong with grace.Im very sorry.
I know I hurt you.
And I wont do that again.Its hard to do.
Of course, it wasnt called that then; it was called shellshock.
There is so much help now for you.
I am myself a patron of an organization called Combat Stress, which deals with veterans who have PTSD.
My father was a man of violent changing moods, particularly with alcohol.
And my home life, from the age of 6 to 12, was unpleasant and scary.
When I was saying that, I had no idea that my father was ill. c’mon understand.
Im not saying that what you did is okay.
Now, violence is a choice that person makes.
But I didnt know.
And what is dawning on me very slowly is that everybody else doesnt know anything either.
You know, I was around when Jonas Salk came up with the vaccine for polio.
I see Tiny Tim crossing the television set.
But with Salk, here was the way to prevent the most dreaded scourge.
The sense ofreliefthat went through mankind!
Thats what will happen here.
There were maybe one or two African-Americans.
You cannot make it alone.
Youmustbe a member of Theater Communications Group and the National Theatre Conference.
Youmustbe a part of the current Establishment.
I thought,This is a very strange question.He was paramount: You always had to have a direction.
And whatever you are, you have to be the best.
It didnt matter if you wanted to.
Thats one of the disciplines.
All my life, I brought people together that have become great friends.
Its one of the most satisfactory things you’re able to do.
I have a friend, and she doesnt share any of her friends, and I dont understand that.
I like to share everything.
You do it with a light touch so you dont take it too seriously.
Whoevers been president has usually been a friend.
Oh, its much ado about nothing, so what its all part of history.
But I always appreciated to be part of it.
The Cuban Missile Crisis was just one of many episodes.
it’s possible for you to imagine, I was in on all of them.
You just feel very grateful, and it was very exciting.
But there was not much I could do about it.
Stick in life to the things you might manage.
Youre not part of the missile crisis, so just leave it alone.
My mother worried all the time, about everything, and she went past 100.
But I think its a waste of time.
The Spanish flu was far worse than this.
The Second World War was horrendous.
Am I going to sit here and worry about this virus?
I hope I have better things to worry about.
Back then, there were a lot of non-actors in theater, and that was wonderful.
But I think we became too rich, and that led to excesses of all kinds.
Even so-called amateurs had something to say, so they began to perform.
The theaters only alive when theres a background of social tumult and passion.
And not just a preacher-teacher.
A pastor, a prophet.
To be a pastor meant that you had to deal with the issues of economic enslavement.
Black people could not be a teller at a bank.
Black people could not teach, could not be a fireman or a policeman.
The prohibitions against black people was the nature of slavery and postCivil War life in America.
Its not a model of hating people, rejecting people.
Its a model of trying to build compassion through justice and truth.
Thats what I do say in my teaching and in my work in the community.
Concentrate on discovering the power of nonviolent love and truth.
And organize, organize, organize, out of the philosophy and strategic history of nonviolence.
There is no alternative.
Use the power of nonviolence in themselves to organize against the wrong, to realign our history.
And that has helped me a lot.
Every time there is a problem, there is also an alternative.
One should never lose hope.
In my extended family, I see four generations.
COVID is a great example of uncertainty, and yet the world is going to continue and go on.
Beyond your expectations, beyond your fears, there is always the sunrise.
My first dance teacher was named Edith Stephen.
The first class justtook.
That first piece I made is still performed: It wasThree Satie Spoons.
Its not easy being a choreographer unless you institutionalize yourself in some way with a big company.
Its gotten harder to make work because my dancers are all teaching and choreographing themselves.
But Ive kept going.
Its the first time Ive had a dead stop in my enterprises.
Spacing wise, this six feet of distance creates a whole new public choreography.
Theres a whole different kind of physicality that you assume with this invisible adversary.
IAmGoingtoSueMerceCunningham
Dancer Gus Solomons Jr., 80
Theres some advice I wish I hadnt followed.
And that was damaging my back progressively.
I am going to sue Merce Cunningham.
But you know, he grew up when I grew up.
No one knew what to do.
I had very good teachers, but the state of somatic knowledge was inchoate at that point.
So I hobbled around not knowing if I was putting my left leg down I just couldnt feel it.
They managed to reduce the curvature to 24 degrees.
I do work with that.
Then I broke my hip in 2018.
Thats going okay, though I dont know.
But he never said stage four, and it hadnt spread, so I had radiation and hormone therapy.
Im strong; Im exercising every day.
My stability is not what it needs to be, but Im working on ways to compensate for that.
Ive reconciled myself to using a cane and seeing what possibilities there are.
That was something I really look back upon as being a lot of time wasted.
Because Id come to New York broke from a working-class background with no prospects.
At 82, Ive seen tokens come and go.
There was Ralph Ellison, who saw younger writers as his competition.
I interviewed him; I said, Why are you so hard on younger writers?
Turns out he hadnt read many of them.
But he wants to be the token.
Then there was the other alternative.
Langston Hughes, who cultivated and mentored younger writers.
So I follow Langston Hughess example in more ways than one.
I live in a black neighborhood.
He lived in Harlem.
He supported younger writers.
I support younger writers.
If you Google my name and look up news, some of the younger writers acknowledge that.
Theres no small people, only small minds.
Im a very positive person, even though I dont sound like it today.
My oldest friend is a girlfriend that Ive got, Dee Dee Wood.
We went to ballet school together.
She and her husband at the time choreographedMary Poppins,The Sound of Music shes a very gifted person.
Its as if not a day has gone by with our lives.
I had Rob Marshall and Scott Ellis and Jason Alexander, and we reminisced aboutThe Rink.
It makes me feel great about myself.
I know Ive had some pretty good taste.
I have a pulmonary fibrosis, I have a walker, and I dont really go out much.
I just go out when my friend takes me to the doctor or the bank.
So having to stay in the house is not an entirely new situation for me.
Actually, Im quite happy as far as that is concerned.
With the virus, well, Ive got a lot of feelings about that.
What is working for me?
I accept the theory of reincarnation.
Ive been a person thats been interested in the so-called afterlife for most of my life.
When this virus came, it was still somewhat of a shock.
What does it mean?
If you accept reincarnation, then you know that were not meant to be living on Earth forever.
I dont ascribe to that feeling that life is here for us to enjoy.
That its just about me having a good time and not owing anybody anything.
Whats more important to me is living by the Golden Rule.
Now, recently, there was an article that got some attention.
Do unto others as you would have done unto you.
When you get to be my age, your friends drop off one by one.
I just lost another old friend of mine who passed away.
I have to accept that.
Whats important is what Im learning now and how am I dealing with what I have to do now.
I also feel, in this fantastic universe that were in, its all good!
Theres a reason for everything that happens.
There was definitely a grieving process.
I got great joy in practicing.
I loved just playing my horn.
So it was very hard.
I went through a period of despair.
I was very fortunate as a youngster.
I got my first saxophone when I was about 8 years old.
I realized early on that I loved music, that this is what it was all about.
I was born on the right track, so to speak.
This is probably having to do with my karma, my previous births.
I dont know when.
I dont want to know.
As the Buddhists say, you get more into the light.
