47) The Coming of Aging Train

It made a new stop. Infrastructure, Imagination

I was at a lunch party the other day, at the home of a new couple I’d met. I’m saying yes to everyone in the quest to patch together a community. Maybe I’m trying to build my life infrastructure too fast, I don’t know really—I’ve never done this before. It’s been a whirl of busy, meeting new people, saying why yes I’d love to and showing up. At this luncheon, where I knew not one of the dozen people assembled, I managed to start conversations or inject myself into ones that were already happening. I do this in the same way as I approach most things: I want to be good at it. I try to find what’s unique about a given person and show the proper amount of interest—not too much, that’s weird—and say just the right things and be witty and charming and invariably it comes up what I do, and most people find that interesting—they assume because of my career I am interesting. Luckily, I am interesting, with or without my career, and I’m also deft at giving away some of me and then pivoting back to the other person. It’s all part of the social dance; turns and dips and spins of witticisms and storytelling—keep it short!—and relatability and likeability. It’s like a game and when you’re new in town and saying “why yes I’d love to” and showing up a lot, you get repeated chances to play the game, learn the steps, do the dance.

It’s exhausting. A friend was saying that’s how an introvert leaves a party—drained and depleted. An extrovert, he says, would be energized by this dance, this game. I always considered myself an extrovert; because I’m not shy, I can perform on stage in front of thousands of people, I can speak in front of a room of strangers, I can do the social thing, can talk to nearly anyone about close to anything. But now I’m thinking maybe I’m more introverted than I realized.

Anyway, at this lunch party the topic of dating apps came up, and I was asked if I’d ever tried it. The women discussing it were at least 20 years younger than me, and each quite beautiful. They all said that being in their 40’s, it was hard to get men to respond to their profiles. I wasted no time in letting them know my advanced age (which I’m actually really proud of, go figure) and that, as a matter of fact, I did try a dating app, for the very first time, a couple of weeks after moving here. They were hooked and wanted to know about my experience. One woman enthused how wonderful it was to meet new potential mates, go out, try new things, go new places. She said she did it often, a couple times a week. I asked if she didn’t start obsessing on the dates, or the guys?

“Why would I do that?” she asked, looking genuinely confused. “It’s just a date.”

And I realized somewhat uncomfortably, again, that my brain is a little out of whack. It’s a good brain, but it’s also a premium, pro-level fantasy looping generator.

Scientifically speaking, neither daydreaming or fantasizing are harmful. The daydreaming brain is doing loads of work, incorporating memory, emotions, experience, specific and random information, reasoning, imagination, planning, autobiographical and hypothetical situations, self reflection….and so on. What might seem like a lazy free-float down the river of scenario and scene building actually has the thalamus and cerebral cortex firing on all cylinders.

my last twitter post

Scientifically it might be harmless, but for an addict, daydreaming or fantasizing can be too much of a reality dodge. In my book, I wrote about being a chronic fantasy conjurer as a child. I theorized that the neural pathways that formed my addictive personality were paved in those years of repetitive dreaming. As an adult with a desire to evolve into the best me I can be, I have to catch myself. Curtail rituals and patterns that aren’t helping me, and allow the ones that are fun and harmless.

So, my one experience with the dating app offered up one person who interested me. Only one I wanted to talk to and then meet, out of dozens and dozens potential dates the app picked for me. This fellow and I have talked, met, hung out, and it’s fine so far. But not enough to give substance to where my imagination can go, which is off the rails. It’s something like this: The first person I like on the first app I sign up for, pay my fee, and try for the first time…maybe this was all meant to be! Maybe I came to England because this was meant to happen! Maybe, maybe…The next thing I know, I’m envisioning world travels and adventures, big blended happy families, a country home with rescue dogs and cats wandering the land as we rock on the porch in our 80s. Of course, all of it laced with a romantic and electric frisson. Etc. And more. Beyond. You get the idea.

It’s nuts. I barely know this person. Hopefully he doesn’t read my substack and is off running for the hills.

Here’s the good twist though. Nowadays, I know how to stop. Go full hall monitor on the out of whack, slightly weirdly wired brain, and re-direct my thinking. Force quit, relaunch. Switch the fantasy and become the star and the focus: imagining making music and writing bestsellers and getting awards and grants and building empires. I envision my fit, healthy self thriving.

Much better.

The coming of aging train made a new, unexpected stop at a London clinic and I now wear hearing aids. Yes. I’m not sure if it’s an interesting story or not, I’ll put the details in a footnote right here: ¹ …and the shorter version here. First off, I don’t mind them. There’s never been a better time, except maybe the future if we have one, to grow older; these are premium high-tech little gadgets. They serve two purposes—to preserve the hearing I have, and to reduce the annoying effects of tinnitus. Well, three purposes; I also hear better. I hear the smack of shoes hitting the pavement across the street. I hear the swish of clothing swiping against itself. I hear what the person I’m sitting with in a noisy restaurant is saying instead of a blended mush of figurants. Do you know what a figurant is? It’s a background actor. I get a kick out of knowing this and happy to share:

You can’t see my hearing aids. At one time my mom got hearing aids; they improved our relationship for a while. I loved when she wore them. Instead of blank, mm hmm responses to my jokes and commentary, I got an actual engaged response. She sparkled more, we laughed and had normal give and take conversations for about a month. Gradually, she stopped wearing them. Because of vanity: you could see them in her ears. I argued, cajoled, pleaded, all of it, to no avail. In due time she lost one, then the other, and I gave up. Life marches on.

The hearing test, which I thought I was nailing, revealed that I had lost the ability to hear high frequencies. This, and possible other factors caused tinnitus. My hearing aids give my brain a sound to focus on and in time it should reduce the buzzing in my ears. My hearing aids also keep the hearing I have intact because without hearing all frequencies, there can be a domino effect, ending up with continued hearing loss.

First it was the tooth implants, then the eye cataracts, now the ears. It may sound alarming, but I just feel absurdly grateful. This stuff is all very expensive and not covered by insurance. If I couldn’t afford it, my coming of aging would be a very different trip. My heart breaks for our elderly population who suffer these inevitable declines without means to break the fall.

There are some things I’ve noticed about living here that are surprising me. One is how English people complain about the weather a lot. About their weather, their English weather, which has presumably been English weather their entire lives. I want to say, “you know where you live, right?” I mean, yeah, I know Texans who complain about the heat, and I always think, C’mon—but somehow I expected Brits to be more stoic about their miserable dreary rainy cold winters.

Every morning, upon awakening, I fling open my blackout bedroom curtains to scope the sky. It’s often a cloud-covered dirty white canvas with charcoal drawn bare trees and grey brown birds perched here and there. But some days it’s a surprise, sunny and cold, a gift from Caelus, the primordial Roman god of the sky. It sneaks in and out through the day and it’s pointless to go out expecting it to be consistent, so I wear layers and keep a small umbrella in my pocket.

I get out and walk. I walk for miles, (or kilometers I should start saying,) looping the massive grounds of Verulam, exploring the city, wandering into pawn shops or vintage stores, getting lost, finding my way back to nature, or back to the city by way of the cathedral spires where I wander through church cemeteries wanting to read and photograph every lopsided, broken tombstone.

Whether it’s the wind, or the mist, or the drizzle, or the sun; the weather doesn’t matter to me. The air hits my face, which is invariably plastered with a goofy grin—I might look like the village idiot, or just happy, whichever. What I tell my friends who check in and ask how it’s going: I had a good life in Austin. A band I loved, cool, interesting friends I loved, a house I loved. It was where I’d landed, what I ended up with and it was good. But it felt like that—where I’d landed and ended up. The possibility of something else didn’t feel present and this is what I feel here. I don’t know where I’ll land or end up, but possibility is ever present.

The days are getting longer and springtime is just a few weeks away.

I play guitar more than I write and miss having recording equipment and my electric instruments, hope to remedy that next month. I do not miss driving. I do miss having a dog—this is a dog city and I used to think how much my little Tux was going to love it here. I hardly ever do my NY Times crosswords or games anymore, a ritual I used to enjoy every morning. I don’t miss it. There are open markets in the town center 2-3 times a week, I never get tired of walking by the stalls, buying fresh food. In general, I don’t miss the food in the US, I think it might be way more GMO’d than food here. No evidence for that, I just feel better after eating. I don’t even miss tacos, which is surprising. Home itself feels like a movable feast, more about where I am than roots or memories or geographical place. I question what it means to me anymore. Being with Audrey feels like home. When she moves after her study abroad semester ends, this will be a whole new deal, one I don’t think I can exactly be prepared for but I’m going to try to keep building a life. Writing is my rebar.

Look out for another dispatch mid March and thanks for riding shotgun on this joyride.

1. The full on hearing aids story: I’d heard of this tinnitus specialty clinic some time ago and looked forward to being a UK resident so I could get an appointment. I’ve had tinnitus for about seven years. Everyone assumes I got this from playing in bands, but I saw a direct correlation after getting a painful and invasive dental sinus lift, bone graft and implant. I sat with my audiologist and learned that my research into the condition was no match for her training and knowledge. There’s no one cause for it; loud noise, yes, but also stress, anger, anxiety, virus, trauma, medication, inflammation, aging and hearing loss—any combination or factor can bring it on.

Those little hairs in the cochlea, actually called stereocilia, are fascinating. They identify sound, taking an mechanical signal and transform it into electrical signals, sending it to their connected auditory nerves. When damage occurs to the hairs and the brain is deprived of their information, millions of neurons start firing off wtf signals to the central nervous auditory system (k, I’m kind of winging it here, I can’t remember the exact terms she used) and the brain creates a sound that isn’t really there, except for the person who hears it.