What interviews with our elders teach us about playing the long game
If you, too, feel like recent world events have shrunken your field of vision down to this tumultuous present tense — one that feels right and dire by forcing us to finally live in the here and now, each day dictated by the videos we saw last night or the news we read this morning — but also one that can begin to feel claustrophobic when the urgency and anger and pain and fear overwhelm at blinding volumes — I highly recommend sitting down with the interviews New York mag published a couple of weeks ago in their special issue, Listening to the Very Old.
Try to get it in print and definitely try to read the whole thing, but at the very least, do not miss the incredible saga that is Rebecca Traister’s interview with Holocaust survivor Marga Griesbach, Bliss Broyard’s interview with Greenwich Village legend Vincent Livelli, and Matt Stieb’s interview with the renowned jazz musician Reggie Workman. These interviews were all obviously conducted under the context of the COVID pandemic, but there’s something about seeing trailblazers like labor organizer Dolores Huerta reflect on lifetimes spent responding to injustice, grief, and trauma with action and a perspective on the long game at hand that is deeply invigorating for this current moment, too.
There’s a part in the Vincent Livelli interview where Broyard talks about visiting him when she was a young writer in the ‘90s, remarking, “It was impossible for my friends and me not to feel that our own lives were boring by comparison and make all sorts of promises on the subway ride back home to seek out more adventure.” You’re going to feel the same way after reading these interviews, though feel free to replace “adventure” with “action,” “courage,” or general existential commitment to being as fully present as possible in this life. Anyway. Go get ‘em today.
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