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Work, and how our 90s assumptions might affect how we work now. Money, which leads to jealousy. Anger and patience — how they grow or die. How children impact on your life in the everyday. And death, I suppose. I could marvel at their existence. I might even glimpse their colours. In the British Library, I am researching my drama. Jaques interviewed a group of successful people and realised that many were feeling confused, disappointed.
Carl Jung , through his work in the s, believed that the midlife stage was vital to human development. He believed there should be colleges for year-olds, institutions of learning to help us get through the painful transition to full maturity. I like this idea. A place to study your navel, if you can still locate it. There are a handful of books and publications in the 60s, a few more in the 70s and 80s. As the decades progress, not only do midlife books become more numerous, they change in tone.
After , they are almost always funny, extended merriment concerning trousers with elasticated waistbands and grumpiness about modern music.
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In the 70s and 80s, books about the angst of the middle years took the topic seriously. These days, the idea of midlife crisis is no longer serious at all. I look up funny quotes. I say to people: Some of them say: But all of them laugh. Then they define themselves against it.
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We are easily shamed in the UK and middle age is so cringe-making that we have to deflect it with a joke. I wonder, though, if the jokes are getting in the way. They help us skim over the sadness, they mask our bewilderment, and the other option — despair — is hardly appealing. But the MLC jokes remind me of other funnies, the ancient ones, the take-my-mother-in-law gags, the anti-gay or racist one-liners.
Comedy shows us where our fears lie. Jokes are how the British acknowledge anything fundamental. Five young children are involved. Or not involved, depending on your perspective. Have we reached the Divorce Years? Are we here already? I used to bitch about them: Now, I really want another wedding. As Louis CK says, all divorces should be celebrated because they mean the end of a bad marriage.
But celebration seems impossible. Part of the horror is the cliche. We all made a promise, when we were young, that we would be different. We would never behave like those awful, obvious adults. But here are our friends, shouting along with the soap script, playing their parts as the vindictive husband, the philandering wife. And, God, the cliche is so much more painful, so much more destructive than we ever imagined.
I watch friends disintegrate, their faces and voices change, as though their atoms are being melted from the inside. A couple, each of them charming, whose marriage went so wrong that he grabbed her round the throat and spat in her face. The depths of the confusion.
A parent brings along his new partner to watch his kids perform in a show, and we smile as we are introduced to her. Does she want to be here?
What was so bad about the relationships that have ended? Funny, attractive, loving people in funny, attractive, loving marriages.
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A story about money. In my late 30s, I was offered a chunk of cash by a publisher to write a book about Madonna, in honour of her turning Now, I have to stop myself getting agitated about where we live. I blame TV property shows, stimulating a long dormant home-improvement gene. My middle-aged emptiness has become epitomised by another absence, the lack of a small patch of concrete in which we could shove some pot plants and P could practise his football skills. How did the people I know make money?
What did they do? We seemed to be doing much the same things for a while, and then I looked away and looked back and they were earning six-figure salaries, living in multi-levelled houses with glass-encased kitchens on the back and gardens big enough to host a shed and a patch of meadow grass. You need a different type of energy to get you through your 40s. That old-school, fizzed-up mania only takes you so far. In the end, fitness — health — is about that energy, I think.
About increasing it, lengthening its span, catching it from other people and new experiences, feeling it surge into you through music, drawing it into your heart from a walk on a cold day. You get tired more quickly in middle age, we know that. And there is nothing more elderly than listlessness and fear.
When my daughter F was around a year old I decided to take up running.
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I wanted to be outdoors, I wanted to be alone, I wanted my head to empty, and my body to stretch. I did some exercises to strengthen my tired muscles and then I went running. I ran a little way, then walked a little way, over and over, for 20 minutes. And when I got home, the serotonin rush was so strong, my head felt as though it was hosting a firework display.
I wrote down how I felt: All the years that I spent going to nightclubs, I thought I was out of my head because of the music and the people and the stimulants. And, actually, I was out of it because of the exercise. Now I go running, round the park, twice a week. I wear my Lycra trousers and my trainers and I run very slowly, not much faster than most people walk. I try not to get frantic about my speed because I worry that getting competitive with anyone — including myself — is a short cut to some kind of seizure.
I have taken part in one race, a 10K, because I was asked to by an editor. Like a dried-out river bed, creviced, parched. They flake and peel. I watch TV and pull strips of skin from my big toes. Every so often, my heels develop cracks so deep that I store the fluff from my socks inside. I never plucked my eyebrows before I was I pluck them haphazardly and fill in the line with a pencil or eyebrow gel. I like how I can make myself look more certain of my opinions.
Never where I expect to find them. Always lower than seems anatomically correct. Taking root, tough and long, in previously unmapped areas, eg, breast, toe, thigh, forehead. Slower, more deliberate, because of the necessity of carrying more bulk. This bulk is harder on the feet. Because, back then, we were all united when it came to booze and drugs.
All up for a good time, all on the same trip. We had codes around our drinking and drug taking, subtleties of behaviour that seem ludicrous to me now. Heroin was disliked, but smoking it was just about acceptable; injecting it was not using needles for any drug was grim. Cocaine in a joint was OK; crack was disapproved of, though people tried it. Weed, ecstasy, speed, coke, acid, poppers, mushrooms, DMT and ketamine were all fine.
And all forms of alcohol, including absinthe, and vodka bongs. We were excited by drugs in our 20s. Weed was standard, a constant bonding experience. Keep looking, for eight hours! Speed meant you could paint your room really quickly. And ecstasy was a breakthrough, a gateway to a new way of living and being. It was communal, loving, exhilarating. But someone will always go harder and darker. Crack and heroin arrive suddenly — overnight, it seems — and once those are in your orbit, everything changes. Even in our 20s, people started falling through the loops. They became belligerent, a pain in the neck.
Their eyes went strange, the person you knew was no longer in there. You realised that you never saw them straight. And someone would say, They were sectioned after staying up for five days. They hanged themselves, they took an overdose, they had a car crash, they choked on their own vomit. The Fear started arriving, not the next day, not even during the night, but while I was actually supposedly having a good time. Your reaction to drink and drugs changes as you age. The hangovers arrive like a hostile alien invasion. You are pinned down, poisoned, from head to heart to soul.
I hardly drink at all now. When the future is upon you, a day in bed, smothered in hangover, seems a terrible waste of time. I still like a cocktail, still have the lazy days, drinking prosecco on the grass while the kids chuck a ball about, ordering takeaway, eating it on a picnic blanket. So what I no longer get is the rush, the jolt, the hit. The euphoric acceleration, the short cut to joy. Sometimes I miss it. I like music from now and music from way before. It can be tricky to move on from your youth, if your youth is what other people want to hear about.
To be asked to look back too much is disheartening. It makes you, now, seem unimportant. Keeping music close to you is one of the easiest ways to ward off elderliness, a talisman that banishes irrelevance. You hear a track, a sound, a beat, and you feel that rush again.
But if music is about the young, we find ourselves in a strange position. We like music, which makes us young. But if we only like the music we loved in our teens that makes us old. So we go searching for new music that we like. A constant in your life. A golden thread that winds through your own story and helps you tell it, a thread that joins your past to now and moves further on, with you until the end. I am under no illusion that anybody ever really becomes an adult. This is because lots of my friends are older than I am 26 , and I see their own existential crises come to the fore in slurs between gulps of Rioja.
Sawyer wants to be able to afford a house with a patio. I look at year-olds and wonder how they look so good and know so much and are cooler than I was at that age answer: Free education, jobs for life, postwar social housing. Then a pulling up of the drawbridge and free TV licences. I do think Generation Y is the screwed generation. Paying thousands of pounds for an education only to have to work for nothing seems unfair. But Sawyer highlights the difficulties for overs of finding employment after the economic crisis. In terms of healthy diet, Joan has been a vegetarian for over 20 years and is an advocate for vegetarianism, saying that we do not need animals to sustain ourselves.
She says she works out regularly but its mostly how active she is on stage that keeps her toned. It seems as if this charismatic showman has always used every performance as a workout. Now, we know how he nails those leg kicks: This includes running 8 miles a day, swimming, kickboxing and cycling. Sir Mick has said:. I alternate between gym work and dancing, then I do sprints, things like that. While on tour, he warms up on a treadmill, but cuts back on the intensity of his training because of the energy he expends on stage.
Two years ago, this rocker lost 23 lbs by altering his lifestyle and incorporating more fitness into his routine. Chris rose to fame after coming in fourth on the fifth season of American Idol and noted how he initially gained 25 lbs from being on tour and eating a lot of junk. After losing the weight, he gave his tips in an interview where he stated that he avoids late night eating, he stays away from his favorite foods like pizza by keeping them out of his sight, he exercises daily, and when he does have a cheat meal, he works out extra hard:.
You have to pay for them as you go, and not let them turn into 25 extra pounds. His exercise routine includes jumping around on-stage, circuit training, and cardio. Although nothing comes easy, he has made healthy lifestyle a priority in his life.
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This rock legend has been touring the world for almost three decades, and during his recent hiatus, he sold all his belongings and moved into an airstream trailer in the Bahamas to find himself and enjoy life. The self-professed enjoyer of life has always been known for being in shape and has said that although he has come close, he has never been drunk in his life- that he always knows when to stop.
On his fitness routine he has said. I like to be outdoors doing things that you can do with your body—pull-ups, sit-ups, push-ups, squats. Gyms are cool, but I find them boring. As far as nutrition goes, he has a Champion juicer with him at all times. He is however, all about balance and says that because he lives half his year in Paris, he does indulge in champagne, pastries, and culinary food- all in moderation. Navarro has admitted that he traded in his drug addiction for gym addiction and he is often seen snapped by the paparazzi leaving the gym!
Dave has been known to workout for 2 hours at a time and does so intensely. His favorite type of exercise is running and he runs 6 days a week for about an hour. A few years ago, he discovered yoga and has been practicing every since. He also makes sure the band also travels with a multi talented professional who is a trainer, chiropractor and nutritionist, all in one. He likes to snack on almonds, fruit and protein bars. Health Fitness Revolution by Samir Becic Foundation is a c 3 organization, to make the world a healthier, fitter place, please donate!
Where the hell is Madonna? As for touring to keep in shape, if this were true, than Taylor Swift would be as toned as Joan Jett. Thanks for your comment! Phil Collen of Def Leppard who is Collen has a blackbelt in Kenpo and trains traditional Muay Thai while on tour to stay in shape for the stage. Rod could have played pro soccer but chose music. The dude moved on stage like a cat.
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