THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, April 25, 1995 TAG: 9504250005
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines
An 81-year-old composer won this year's Pulitzer Prize for music.
A 79-year-old writer won this year's Pulitzer Prize for drama.
The awards, recently announced, were for new works - not lifetimes of achievement.
The composer, Morton Gould, won for ``Stringmusic,'' a 30-minute work first performed March 10, 1994.
The writer, Horton Foote, won for his play, ``The Young Man From Atlanta.''
Advanced age is no friend come to visit. Body parts hurt. The mind may play tricks. Loved ones die. Regrets multiply like rabbits. The world changes in weird ways.
Still, Gould and Foote have continued to think and, at least as important, to feel and even to create.
A recent study showed vigorous exercise extends life. We suspect creative people, too, have an edge in the race for a long life. Patterns are seductively easy to follow. Habits are comforting. But people who do what they've never done before - whether in the kitchen, garden, garage, workplace or den - know the thrill of discovery. They are explorers.
The first time you travel a winding road, you are eager to see what's around each curve. The 100th time down the same road, you just want to get where you're going.
At this paper, examples abound of creative elders.
Publisher Frank Batten Jr. recently called reporter Mason Peters the best writer we have. Peters is 80. He covers North Carolina. As readers of that edition of this paper can attest, he is one of the most prolific reporters on the staff.
Guy Friddell, 74, could retire any minute, but his retirement would break readers' hearts and probably his own. He's been a journalist 50 years, the past 36 as a columnist. As dependable as the sunrise, he has composed upward of 7,000 columns. They have expanded the vocabularies of dozens of editors and tens of thousands of readers.
George Tucker, 85, has written Jane Austen the Woman: Some Biographical Insights. Published last year, it has received rave reviews from Jane Austen experts and historians here and abroad. Tucker writes a historical column for the Sunday Commentary section.
When you're young, you think a time will come when you're grown up, and that'll be that - you'll be through changing; you'll be done with doing anything new. When you're old, you may think, ``This is how I turned out.''
But if you're breathing, you can try something new. You can think new thoughts, drive a different road. You can plant flowers in ways you never planted them before, or cook a meal you never cooked before, or write a poem to entertain a grandchild. You can create.
Time spent doing something new is delightful. Take dancing lessons, but later do the dances your own way. Sing in the shower.
Way too often we're restrained by chains of our own making - each link a fear of failure. Most shower singers, it's true, can't sing. But as someone said, ``Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.''
Sing in the shower, loud as you can. by CNB