RELEVANCE VS. LEGACY
At a gathering a couple of years back, a group of about twenty-five was discussing a topic having to do with aging (I don’t recall the exact topic because I’m aging), and the ever-insightful Letty Cottin Pogrebin noted that she was quite concerned about maintaining her relevance in today’s world. I, whose relevance has been far, far more circumscribed than hers, commented that I was less interested in relevance than in legacy.
Ever since, I’ve thought about what I was trying to express.
When I retired from editing Jewish Currents in 2018, I pretty much gave up on the hope — and, soon after, the desire — to be relevant in this world. The generation that took over the magazine had a very different sensibility from mine: They seemed obsessed with deploring Israel (though they called themselves diasporists); they were intent on undermining any proclamations of Jewish “specialness,” notwithstanding the historical progressive bona fides of American Jews; and they had little interest in the institutional culture of the magazine, its history, its folksy qualities, its secularism. That’s how it felt to me, anyway — as if they had redesigned and relaunched the magazine without first reading a back issue.
My feeling of irrelevance goes much deeper than retirement, however. I’m not currently connected to Facebook, Instagram, or other social media, and I’m not interested in making connection to the Evil Algorithms to any significant degree. My musical tastes, in general, hearken back to my youth and my parents’ youth: I own at least eight Joni Mitchell albums and ten Miles Davis albums (and I still call them albums) but not a single one by Beyoncé. My politics are rooted in psychology, history, and Martin Luther King, Jr.-style compassion; the prioritization today of identity and vocabulary in leftist politics feels suicidal to me.
Etcetera. I’m not even relevant enough to bother further itemizing my irrelevance. I just know that whenever I feel ambition stirring and I contemplate trying to boost my relevance a bit, it feels undignified — like trying, here at age 70, to flirt with a young woman.
As for my legacy? Hell, it’s hard to define it when you cultivate irrelevance. I’ve got a shelf full of books that I’ve written, most of which have been read by a few hundred people, at best. I’ve got songs that I’ve written and artworks galore that will probably never be rediscovered. I have two grown kids who don’t really like to communi-cate very deeply with their parents, so how I’ve influ-enced them remains a bit of a mystery. I’ve planted a bunch of trees that will be still standing, I hope, a hundred years from now. And I hope to be remembered as an interesting, spirited, and kind man who created some far-out stuff on his watch. (Then again, most of the people I hope to be remembered by will die shortly before or after me . . .)
Does this sound depressing? Not to me! I’ve never been happier than to be left alone in the world with my friends and loved ones. I feel sorry for young people with their ambitions and strivings, as necessary as they may be. As John Lennon wrote:
“I’m just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round./I really love to watch them roll.”
Unfortunately, the wheels are rolling downhill in this overheating world. Now, that’sdepressing! •
