In a garbage bag with Latin written on it that says, "It's hard to give a shit these days."

God willing, I find myself saying with certain frequency, I want to look as damned good as Lou Reed does when I'm his age:

(Photo from some stranger on the internet; thanks, stranger!)

Not necessarily because he looks good-- at least, in any sort of objective or quantifiable sense. I suppose there are people his age (65) who look a lot better, but when I get to 65 I want to look as much like Lou Reed looks right now as I can possibly manage. Because here's a guy who's been through more than enough, who has done what would seem immeasurable injury to himself through years of self-abuse subsequent to being abused by his family and electrocuted, like Carl Solomon, at Rockland, yet he looks... fine. He doesn't look great, but who wants to? Instead, he looks like a shrug, a smirk, and a snort, and it's glorious. He looks the way the best songs on his record New York (1988) sound-- wise, wry, and unconquerable.

I don't usually pay very much attention to anything he's done since 1973, but I grew up on Transformer and virtually everything the Velvet Underground ever recorded; I have much love and respect for that band and that particular solo record. I've never had much affection for Reed as a person-- until recently my feelings for him have been closer to contempt and dismissal. As I get older, though, I find I have a grudging respect for his utter unwillingness to endure what he feels to be bullshit, even if it does manifest itself in self-aggrandized arrogance. To paraphrase John Cale in a recent issue of Mojo, you can't really expect anyone to live the life that Reed has endured and turn out nice, even if that means you have to live with the fact that he's a jerk.

New York is, in a lot of ways, a jerk record, but in no way devoid of real, if scaly, emotion. It's arrogant and disdainful but largely of those things most deserving of disdain. The attitude of the record is akin to that of Hunter Thompson, who said of the Bush administration in one of his last writings (the first, however, to be relevant in some years), "I piss down the throats of these Nazis, and I'm too old to worry about whether they like it or not. Fuck them.” As many have said before, New York is a grown up record, marked by the cynicism and wrath of years of resentment. Thank god-- it provides dose of real feeling generally absent among the later output of rock-and-rollers of yore. As a document of aging, New York is phenomenal. Tracks like "Romeo Had Juliet" and "Dirty Blvd." are expressions of perspective from a personality sharpened, not daunted, by age.

I spend a lot of time thinking about getting older, and too often my feelings are grounded in dread. From time to time, I need to be reminded that there's more than one way to get old, and that it's entirely possible to be on your way to 70 and still look as cool as you sound. I will count myself lucky if I get to the age of 65 and wear my years so well without varnish or apology.

(Photo from Reed's website; don't sue, I'm broke!)