Embracing Nostalgia and Growth: Reflections on Aging, Music Festivals, and Self-Discovery

Featuring: Axl Rose and the Okefenokee Swamp

To say that I harbored serious reservations about attending our city's largest annual music festival would be a significant understatement. Every reason that had made me apprehensive about going became evident from the moment we arrived. The scorching heat? Check. The muddy trenches? Check. And the vast, teeming crowds? Check. One of the myriad ways in which I've changed as I've grown older, is that I've developed a general aversion and, perhaps, a borderline paranoid fear of being in large crowds. Speaking of aging, why is it that I can't hear my kids when they ask me something from across the room, but everything sounds too loud?

Back to crowds, we spend so much time in our respective bubbles, interacting with those whom we know, going to the same grocery store with people in our neighborhoods. And although I live in a fairly diverse part of town, economically and racially, nothing quite prepares you for the melting pot of a music festival- especially when the two, opposing headliners are a young trap artist and a 1990’s-era hard rock band. If you sit back and observe the people, as old-timers like me tend to do, you'll witness a captivating parade representing every imaginable walk of life.

There were times when I looked around, getting completely lost in other people’s stories. Are they a couple? What are they on? Did they only come here for the photo op? Do they normally dress like elves? How did they pass that medieval glass globule of elixir through the security gate? Human nature is to judge and assess, right? When I was younger, I’m sure I would’ve been chock full of snarky, cynical internal commentary. But as I’ve aged, I’ve morphed from less of a social critic to more of a social anthropologist. I found myself embracing the opportunity to commune with people I don’t see every day, or in some cases, ever, reveling in the beautiful fact that music can bring us all together. Sure I caught myself “tsk”ing these new generations and their omnipresent posing and checking to make sure they hit the right angles, but there was a new softness that hasn’t existed before.

There’s no doubt that I am becoming more conservative as I age. I saw a comedian recently saying that people grow up and become Republicans. That is, many of us start out as progressive, forward-thinking idealists, but when we constantly smack into the wall of the system, we become more entrenched and adopt a more pragmatic outlook. In some respects, I've followed this pattern, but socially, I've unquestionably become more progressive than I was in my early adulthood. I genuinely believe that if everyone embraced the "live and let live" mantra (as long as no one is causing harm), the world would be a much happier place.

The real test of my tolerance came when it was time to trudge through the primordial soup that had become the city park. A tiny, smartly-dressed version of myself perched on my right shoulder, admonishing, "You're too old for this. What are you even doing, trudging through the mud?" Meanwhile, the youthful and carefree side of me on the left retorted, "Isn't it wonderful to be here, wading through this porta-jon runoff swamp, not taking life so seriously?"

Here are some photos illustrating the contrast between what the more cautious me on the right wanted to do and what the adventurous me on the left actually did:

R.I.P. Chucks, you were good to me.

We made the bold decision to push our way to the very front, standing mere yards from the stage. I asked myself, “Do you really want to see Axl Rose at age 61?” And when he charged onto the stage, initially unrecognizable, I immediately recoiled. His voice wavered at times, and although he could still hit his trademark, piercingly high snarls, he struggled to sing while in motion. I became convinced that I had committed a grave error. I wanted to remember my youth as it was, hot and lithe, shimmying across the stage like a snake, not a battered-bodied rocker, the effects of many decades of hard living laid bare.

However, when I heard the initial riffs of "Nighttrain," one of my favorites, something ignited within me. I found myself shouting out the lyrics, nearly knocked over by an overwhelming sense of nostalgia. With my entire being, I recalled being at the concert in 1992 at Madison Square Garden, feeling those lyrics deep in my soul.

“I'm on the Nightrain
Bottoms up
I'm on the Nightrain
Fill my cup
I'm on the Nightrain
Ready to crash and burn
I never learn”

The youth can be so nihilistic. “Live fast, die young.” Looking back I wonder, is the attitude born out of the pain of adolescence? There is so much confusion and self-doubt at times, that you can’t imagine carrying the immense burden of life when your arms are arthritic and frail? Moreover, you see life as an adult as monotonous and dull. Waiting to die while sitting in a desk chair, trying to churn out the TPS reports before deadline?

When I watch action movies, and the protagonist inevitably finds themselves in a real pickle, hanging from the axle of a plane, flying over an active volcano, while being attacked by pterodactyls, I would always think, “Man, I would just let go and be done with it.” Someone will always say, “Nah, in those situations, your survival instinct would kick in.” I’d quietly wonder if I have a survival instinct at all. I’m the one who was always ready to crash and burn.

Axl shimmied his way over to our vicinity, and suddenly I saw it, plain as day. The twinkle in his eye and the sideways smirk, the swagger if you will. And in that moment, he was young. I think when we are kids, we believe that we’ll lose ourselves as we age. By becoming more conservative, we will snuff out the flame of our true nature. But seeing Axl’s smirk reminded me that the spark is always there, it just moves around a little, reorganizes itself. Amidst the thick of adulthood, which we once regarded as tedious, we discover the meaning we perpetually sought during our youth. We realize that not all revolutions need to change the world; sometimes, they can merely brighten someone's day, often with nothing more than a smile.

The urge to crash and burn is still in me. I believe that I may always host the parasite of the will to self-destruct. I just feed it less and less, while paying greater heed to the other, equally vital need – the need for connection, growth, and well-being. Is that not what growing old gracefully entails? Yesterday, I learned that gracefulness can manifest as 60-year-old rockers absorbed in their passion on a stage. It can be found in standing ankle-deep in the muck of life. Truly owning one's mindset is arguably the most beautiful aspect of growing up

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