Third Age
August 2012
Guiltily listening to the Sydney International Piano Competition on ABC Radio in July, I reminded myself that one of the blessings of old age is that one need never sit another exam.
As it is many years since I sat an exam, or competed for anything, I hope this means that finally I will be freed of the recurring dream of opening an exam paper and discovering that (having skipped lectures) I had read 50 years off the course.
I am not sure that institutions of learning still require students, stomachs churning, to sit in great draughty rooms with invigilators and merciless clocks. But surely the same sort of terror has survived when pianists, some in their teens, are invited to compete against each other in a marathon. Commentators kept saying it was not all about virtuosity, but memory lapses cause sympathetic listeners exquisite pain even if the pianist is praised for “recovering well,” as though from typhoid. One wonders how the parents and teachers of young people born with such special talents can bear it. I kept imagining the horror of waiting one’s turn, losing one’s breakfast behind the Steinway, and afterwards hearing a commentator showing, perhaps, that the point of a performance had been missed. Why do I listen?
It is not because I hope to discover genius. My musical discernment is not so great. I do like to hear a lot of piano music, but some of the impulse to follow the competition is from sympathy for the performers (is this a leftover from my time of playing Wood Nymphs’ Frolic at the Sydney Eisteddfod in the 40s?). I want to show them the love in what is a barbaric contest that perhaps does not belong in the arts.
The contestants must think it’s worth it and, after all, they are performers. We were told that among the pianists immediately before their performance were some who prayed or danced. One declared he was going to make history. Young people today are a lot tougher. But being judged, measured, in this way, and the judging itself, are strange behaviour.
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It was fun seeing Stephen Fry talk about his favourite gadgets on TV a few weeks ago. Some of the old gadgets are still lurking in cupboards. Old people still resist built-in obsolescence, though computers have taught us a severe lesson about it. Even the least technical old friends these days would hesitate to say, “But I’ve only had it for three years!” My point is that intriguing though it is to see how gadgets have changed, Fry might have held my attention longer if he had talked about how behaviours have changed within our lifetime.
You can ignore new gadgets (I know someone who still uses the old dig-it-in tin opener). Changes in human behaviour cannot be avoided. I suspect that approval or disapproval of such changes takes up a considerable space in the dialogue in our heads as we struggle to make sense of the world that bears so little resemblance to the one in which we first became conscious 70 and more years ago. Extremes of wickedness and kindness have not changed very much. It is the everyday stuff that makes us wonder.
My younger granddaughter is four. She told her parents that she and a little friend from school would be meeting up on holidays this recent break. Her parents dismissed this kindly, knowing that the family was going overseas and unlikely to bump into anyone they knew. It turned out that the children knew what they were talking about, knew exactly where they were going, to the same island. The worldliness of them! At age four. Children are of the world now, even if they don’t travel. They know how many beans make five long before they are five themselves. Do you remember the snivelling kids we used to be, crying on the first day of school, anxious outside the family, frightened of teachers? Thank heavens, not any more.
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With the Olympic Games underway and Wimbledon not far behind, we are all aware of how much competitive behaviour has changed. Bragging, boasting, smashing and rudeness are horrible in sport, but tolerance is now high. If I have to listen to one more breathless, victorious athlete sobbing and laughing with ungracious self-obsession, I will switch off. Maybe I have already done that. I switched on long enough to watch the Federer-Murray final and was rewarded by the players’ restraint. Not typical behaviour anymore.
Men used to remove their hats when they came inside. It still niggles that men who need to define their personalities by silly hats and caps wear them everywhere all the time. For women hats and gloves were de rigueur in our living memory, and as a kid I was scared of nuns in their wimples. Now we are upset by a head scarf; some of us, anyway. We have uncovered our head but bared our teeth. Someone seems to have decided that people, especially women, are required to smile all the time. This has led to ferocious teeth-whitening. Gravitas is no longer appreciated. The cult of tattoos revolts me. I will say no more, but when I saw Angelina Jolie’s beautiful skin disfigured by a tattoo, I could have cried.
Perhaps most annoying and prevalent among strange behaviours is that the language of appreciation has become debased. Everything is “incredible”. Someone on a book show recently said that a protagonist should be “incredibly believable.” Now that would have been incredible 30 years ago.
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