Slip Slidin' Away

When the identity we've carefully cultivated starts to slip away - do we vanish, or do we allow ourselves to be witnessed as we've become?

I attended a concert last week by Paul Simon, who is actively touring on his Quiet Celebration Tour. But this is not a reflection on Paul Simon. This is a reflection on all of us, and the inevitability of change. This is not an essay on loss. This is an essay on choosing how we wish to be seen and what happens when a person keeps showing up after the version of themselves that had been known and loved is gone.

It was the start of a beautiful night under the stars, sharing the lush green lawns and majestic trees of Tanglewood with a sold-out crowd, all anticipating the arrival of a musical legend. Tanglewood invites lavish picnics and people take picnicking at Tanglewood seriously, bringing elaborate dining accompaniments like candelabras, crystal champagne flutes, cloth-covered tables, and gourmet meals. There’s always an air of expectation, pleasure, joy, and excitement as people wait for a show to begin. Tonight was no exception as we waited for Paul Simon at the second of three sold-out shows.

This concert was described as slower, more contemplative, acoustic, and reflective, as befitting an 84-year-old performer looking back upon a long career. He opened with his newest piece, Seven Psalms, a quiet, meditative reflection on life, mortality, faith, and what remains when the old forms start to change. He wasn’t looking to recreate the past. Rather, we were being invited to intimately join him in his present. We were not being asked to remember who he had been. We were being asked to see him as he is now.

His voice was no longer the voice that I remembered. The sweetness, ease, and fluidity that once defined his music were largely gone. His range was limited. Notes that once seemed to have floated easily seemed difficult to hold. There were moments when I felt uncomfortable, not because I was disappointed, but because I could feel the distance between the artist I had come expecting to hear and the man standing before us now. But I kept watching, because something more important was taking shape. He was not asking to be remembered. He was asking to be received.

He was met with thunderous applause after every shaky delivery of familiar songs, even though the performance bore little resemblance to what it had once been. The audience loved this aging performer who was not willing to stop simply because he had changed, and who was unwilling to hide because aging said he should.

The Paul Simon of memory was slipping away. The voice was slipping away. The range was slipping away. The smoothness and ease were slipping away. Perhaps even the audience’s expectations were slipping away as the concert unfolded. But something else arrived in its place.

Not the old brilliance. Something more tender. And that is why this is not an essay about Paul Simon. This is an essay about the willingness to be seen as we are, not as we may think the world expects us to be.

Every human is going to have their own version of “slip sliding away.” Every human will eventually become unrecognizable to some earlier version of themselves. The body changes. The capacities change. Roles change. The face in the mirror changes. The voice – literal or metaphorical – changes. But when the familiar slips away, especially due to age, do we vanish, apologize, or pretend – or do we allow ourselves to be witnessed as we’ve become?

A few weeks ago, in an essay called Clap Like You Mean It, I wrote about young children at a dance recital. I irreverently called it The School for Less Than Perfect Children. What moved me was not their polish, but the way the school celebrated self-expression over perfection, showcasing children who did not yet know they needed to hide. Paul Simon represented the adult version of little children at a dance recital, showing us what it looks like to become unashamed once again. Not because nothing had been lost. But because loss was no longer a reason to hide and one can still sing even though the music has changed.

We are all sliding away from something that may have once been precious, or sliding away from the need to be remembered as we once were. But not everything slipping away is a loss. Sometimes slipping away opens the door for us to discover something new that we could not have seen before. The question becomes, will we grasp for what had been but can no longer be? Or will we choose to slide into the freedom to be something new?

I am slip slidin’ away too. Away from the face I once saw in photographs. Away from the body that once moved through the world with youthful ease. Away from the body that has carried me through every chapter of my life, a body that has known grief, love, childbirth, ceremony, labor, illness, healing, pleasure, and becoming. Away from the illusion that beauty, sensuality, power, or permission only belongs to the young. But I am not sliding into disappearance. I am sliding into a deeper belonging to myself. I no longer believe I need to hide simply because my body no longer resembles that of a younger woman.

Maybe the grace of aging is not that we stop slip slidin’ away. Maybe the grace of aging is that we stop believing that aging comes with regret, embarrassment, fear, and shame. Maybe the grace of aging is that we stop asking to be seen as we once were, allowing ourselves to be received exactly as we are.

Paul Simon may not have delivered the voice we all came to hear. But perhaps he delivered something much more rare – the sight of a human being willing to stand inside the truth of who he had become. And the audience rose to meet him there.

Maybe that is the invitation for all of us as we slip away from former versions of ourselves -

Not to try to get it back.

Not to vanish.

Not to apologize.

Not to pretend.

And certainly not to give up.

But to remain standing in the light, changed and still changing, and allow ourselves to be received.

And perhaps that is what Paul Simon offered us that night - not the voice we remembered, but the courage to stand before us in the voice that was there.

May we each find the grace to do the same - to stand in the light of who we have become, feeling comfortable to sing a new song.

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