Into the Void

There comes a point where you don’t have all of your life ahead of you. While there may have been room for failure when you went into a particular business as a young man or woman, you eventually face the last furlough. Despite the aspirationalist idea that anything is possible, in fact, it’s not. Professional athletes who may go on to sponsor all kind of programs evangelizing the philosophy of achievement and possibility know limitations first hand. Late in his career George Foreman lost a match to a now forgotten fighter named Shannon Briggs. Many of those who saw the fight might have disagreed with the decision, but the fact was that the journeyman fighter had besides some potential and talent, one thing that the veteran didn’t possess, youth. There are, of course, exceptions. Picasso’s creativity burgeoned in his later years and apparently his sexual prowess was also immune to the effects of age. However, more often than not, you see an oedipal process occurring in which talented individuals are displaced by their more youthful counterparts. It’s hard to remember that writers like Henry Miller and Charles Bukowski were once considered revolutionary when in our current climate their transgressional work actually seems conservative and even Neolithic to a generation highly influenced by values that question gender itself. Some plays have an epilogue. In this one, there's a transcendent opportunity that’s afforded older people, which is to play to the void.