on youth and frustrated drawings

I am totally, totally frustrated with today´s drawings; but as I have promised myself to post uncensored, then here they are. One is from a young woman I saw in the subway today and I thought her scarf and hair matched perfectly, and she had an interesting face. The other drawing is from an old muslim woman who lives somewhere on my street and takes a stroll everyday around 6 p.m. She walks very slowly but she always has a cigarette; she has a hard expression on her face. And the last drawing is a drawing gone wrong, I was thinking not to post it , but it felt dishonest with the purpose of this blog.

 

  

 

For several days I had in my head to write about this obsession of remaining young in today´s society or praising youth as a value per se, also in the arts. There is a case now here in Germany of a 17 year old girl who wrote a book and won a literary prize, now the scandal is that the book is a copy paste exercise from several teenage blogs and it has become quite a debate between the literary critics; until a writer with more common sense asked if the fussle was really worth it. I do not want to sound like an old conservative narrow minded person, and I do not want to disregard creative young people and I think their work should be encouraged, but my problem is with the fact that a lot of very young artists´works are treated like masterpieces in detriment of the work of older artists. Doesn´t experience gives us something to our benefit? Years of doing something, practicing it, reflecting about it, doesn´t that lead to a richer work?  Unfourtunately the market needs these 5 minute stars. In any working field when you read job ads, most of the time they are looking for young people, sometimes only young people are wanted; it is expected that you are 25 but you must fulfill requirements of someone who has had already 20 years of working experience! 

I loved a scene in the movie Up in the air when the young woman who is 23 questions the older woman about men, love and life. The 23 yrs. old is so determined, so strict, rigid,  in her expectations and wishes while the older woman tells her that one relaxes with age and the young woman quite schocked asks if isn´t that "settling" as if settling would be the worst thing in the world. And yes, I think one relaxes with age, (thank god!) although it is hard to walk against the pressures any woman has in this society. I do not want to be twenty again (despite my eye bags and the fact that my jawline is not as defined as it was). I feel more comfortable with myself, my expectations are more true to who I am and I do not feel old. I am 41 and I still want to learn and do a lot of things, but to do this I do not want to have to look 10 years younger. I have decided sometime ago that I like my graying hair, so they are staying, as for my eyebags I considered having them removed but then I thought that a surgery is a surgery and I do not need that kind of risk. So my eyebags are also staying (although I must say that the lights in elevators and in the subway make me doubt about the decision).

And using movies again as an example, one of the things I liked so much about Julia Child´s story  in the film Jule & Julia is that she was not so young as she discovered her place in cooking. I think we all deserve the chance to try new things, I guess the real youth should be that of the spirit, when we realize we can still learn, and love and enjoy.