On How 20 is the New 40

I'm turning 20 tomorrow, and I'm not chill with it. No longer being teenaged feels like a physiological acceptance of middle age, which may explain why I listened to Paul Simon's "Graceland" and sipped on stiff Manhattans every night over break in the newest installment of inevitable existential crises and alcohol abuse that have accompanied my last few birthdays.

Songs make middle age more tragically romantic (or romantically tragic) than films or books can. In movies you have to see the graying hair and undulating jowls and inexplicably moist eyes of age. In books you fill in all of the sensory details of mid-life angst, which leads to aggressively macabre renderings. With music, you're given the gravelly sound of squareness—it's subtle enough to stop direct confrontations with mortality but tangible enough to avoid your own sick vision. Before I’m off to rolling golf courses and 4 p.m. dinners of Boca, here are lyrics from the Crimson Arts Music Vault by middle-aged artists that explain what 20 (40) feels like.

"A man walks down the street

He says why am I soft in the middle now.”

("You Can Call Me Al" Paul Simon, from "Graceland," 1986)

Damn it, Paul Simon, for capturing in lyric exactly what I feel today. The creative lifeblood behind 1960s folk-rock duo Simon & Garfunkel lays down a brutally honest interior monologue about the creeping self-consciousness that accompanies middle age. Simon’s verse screams, "I'm here, I'm in my forties, and I want to be heard." Yesterday, as I stuffed a second gyro into my mouth and thought about how I may never work out again, I couldn't help but praise Simon for being a truth-teller.

“She said don't I know you

From the cinematographer's party

I said who am I

To blow against the wind?"

("I Know What I Know" Paul Simon, from "Graceland," 1986)

The coupling of South African melodies with iconic songwriter Paul Simon's neurotic wit makes "I Know What I Know" the most arresting conception of middle age ever put to record. Who doesn't know the feelings of blasé flirtation between ostensibly "mature" artistes? Even if Simon's lack of credit towards the African musicians who helped with "Graceland" makes his usurpation of foreign melodies more of a Lester Burnhamian search for meaning than activism, the jarring juxtaposition is still a musical parallel to the confusion of middle-aged dating. Yesterday, when I decided on a second gyro over "meeting women" with my "friends," I couldn't help but empathize with Simon's shoulder-shrug.

"Fat Charlie, the Archangel, sloped into the room

He said, ‘I have no opinion about this

And I have no opinion about that.’"

("Crazy Love, Vol. II" Paul Simon, from "Graceland," 1986)

I have no opinion about this.