I saw Steven Tyler, the mouth from Areosmith sing the Star Spangled Banner at Sunday's NFL Championship game and I cringed. I physically cringed. Surgically enhanced, professionally styled, a sort of rock version of the Real Hollywood Housewives (highly recommended reality television), Tyler looked and sounded positively dreadful. In his prime, he could rock, no doubt about it. Nobody begrudges his long hair, although it appears to be totally fake. He is a man of common sense and fair reason. He has fathered an adequate actress, Liv. But I am a senior citizen. My whole cultural context emerged from rock. It has been the soundtrack of my life. I still listen to it, old and new. So why did I react so viscerally?
There are aspects in our psychology as individuals that we are unaware of, yet which dictate our idea of ourselves. Growing old disgracefully a catchy, whimsical idea when some cinema idol expresses the notion, in reality is something of an embarrassment. It indicates that in truth we haven't grown at all. If what excites in our dotage, is what excited us in our youth, we either didn't get enough of it, or didn't learn from it. Tyler's absurd, rock scream at the end of the national anthem was more a cry for help than of defiance.
Gray Dourman
www.magichelix.com
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