Knuths Lost & Found December

Here is Knuth's monthly review Lost and Found again. Find out what he was thinking about in December and what tips he has for you. Spoiler alert: this time everything revolves around growing old. Maybe you'll take a look, because we don't get together that young anymore.  

#Oldschool

December 2021 - The Earth is 4.6 billion years old and became one year older again in January. It would have no problem with me calling it old. That's not the case for its inhabitants, who settled down around 10,000 years ago and have been civilising this planet ever since. In the Anthropocene, the age shaped by humans, the word "old" and all the associations we make with it are readily avoided by men and women. In our mindfulness world, I only use it with caution, but not because I want to hurt people, but because it saves me from many misunderstandings. Manufactum and ARTE are still among the few places where I can say "old". Here it is not taken as an insult, here it is a seal of quality.

So that we don't make others and ourselves look old, I observe more and more linguistic contortion.

In families, grandmas and grandpas no longer want to be called grandma and grandpa because they perceive this term as a stigma and it only makes them feel older. Companies refuse to give their old warhorses the rank of senior, preferring to use titles like "Head of Something"; in their mind, the senior is more of a jerk who has lost touch with the modern world and that kind of thing sells badly. The term experience is also increasingly being replaced by the word competence, because anyone with experience is already a fossil for this world. We like to call those who are up to date competent. In truth, these poor people are always just on speed so as never to miss the boat. Even colours are no longer allowed to come across as aged. No one says beige any more because many still associate it with rollators. Today we say nude, which always sounds a bit like idiot to my ears, but fashionably it's a wow expression that makes the grey cells glow.

And what happens when my generation has the urgent need and wants to "tell from the war"? If we were to start the sentence with "back then", anyone born after 2000 would immediately fall into a microsleep. We older ones reach into our parents' bag of tricks and prefer to say: "That was already around in my day in the 80s - and they're always hip." This phrase slowly unfolds its poison because it humiliates the youth with its coolness and makes them seem unimaginative because they themselves seem to have run out of new things to say. This is how we dissolve the distance between what was hip then and what is hip now. This sentence is a fountain of youth for old people because it makes them believe that they are still up to date. But that's not enough for us, our anti-age zeitgeist likes to use English, which is supposed to make the language more modern and youthful, which I find particularly "weird".

Whether it is desirable to always appear young, both mentally and physically, is something I don't want to comment on here, but one thing I can say with certainty is that trying to communicate without wrinkles is a pretty stupid idea.

My life is finite. I cannot stop my transience with words. I don't think a linguistic Botox cure makes sense for any of us. In the end, we all look old anyway.

 

***

 

Maybe it was the end-of-year blues that so many topics dealing with ageing were brushing against me in December. Why not do a complete Lost and Found about it, I thought. Here are my tips.

 

 


 

 

The Father

 

My mother is over 80 years old and she is mentally fit. She looks after herself and takes an active part in life. I am very happy about that. I learned that it can be different and much more painful for everyone involved in the film The Father. It tells the story of Anthony (Anthony Hopkins), who suffers from dementia, and his daughter Anne (Olivia Colman). It is the inner view of the sufferer: Impaired perception, confusion, forgetfulness, loss of skills. The poor guy's memory plays tricks on him, he no longer recognises his own surroundings and cannot remember. As a viewer, you don't know at the beginning what is imagination and what is reality. Anthony is desperate, for him it feels as if he were a tree that is gradually losing its leaves.

The Father, verfügbar auf Apple TV, Google play, amazon, maxdome

 


 

 Who am I when I am nothing?

 

Patricia Riekel, the long-time editor-in-chief of Bunte magazine, writes about her retirement. She has been driven down from 250 km/h to 15 km/h virtually overnight. Rolling out is not easy for her. She misses the daily routine, the togetherness, but she also misses the power. "The change to retirement means the deepest cut in life. Because nothing makes it clearer to us that we are getting older...No longer being in the public eye felt like I had lost my voice..." A book that tells of the transition into a new phase of life and shows new perspectives. Because there is life after the job. If Mrs Merkel should read these lines: Madam Chancellor, please read it.

Wer bin ich, wenn ich nichts mehr bin ? – Patricia Riekel, 288 Seiten, Heyne

 


 

Love For Sale

 

They've done it again: Frank Sinatra's favourite singer Tony Bennett, 19-time Grammy winner and now 95 years old, and Lady Gaga, almost 60 years younger, have recorded another record with jazz classics together. If you like songs like "Night and Day" or "I get a kick out of you", you should take a listen. A nice example that old and young can learn well from each other and inspire each other. "I know he's 95 years old, but every time I sing with him I see a young man," says Lady Gaga. Age just doesn't matter when you're in the mood for good music.

 

Love for Sale - Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga, available on Apple Music and Spotify.

 

 


 

Wrinkle free

 

"When things get tough, women buy lipsticks." Stella Martin's (Adele Neuhauser) strategy is simple. She writes mega-successful beauty guides and sells the matching cosmetics. This has made her very rich and famous. She is not interested in her family, one daughter has turned away, the other has driven her into optimisation hell and her husband is only a shadow. She is a self-absorbed, success-hungry and know-it-all bitch who gets on everyone's nerves. Only when the publisher rejects the new book cover because her old face no longer fits the content does her life come apart at the seams. A social comedy about the youth craze. Adele Neuhauser is a real eye-catcher. Thank you.

Faltenfrei , ARD Mediathek

 


 

Älter werden 

 A

A collection of thoughts, observations and anecdotes about ageing. The book has already survived many shelf cleanings at my place because I read it every now and then. As a man, I certainly perceive ageing differently than a woman, but I like her thoughts on wrinkled sex, time, family, youth or forgetfulness. "I have the impression that with increasing age my view of others has become milder, but that of myself has become more merciless." It is sentences like these that I found myself in. I will continue to nibble a little in the future.

Growing older - Silvia Bovenschen, 160 pages, Fischer paperback

 

There you are. Thank you very much for taking the time. I hope you had a good start into the new year. See you again in a month. May January be kind to you. See you soon.

 


Knuth Kung Shing Stein is a founding member of SoSUE and supports other brands. He himself describes his work as "something with media". The Hamburg native would love to move to a mountain with a beach. You can find out more about Knuth on his website Collideor and Scope.


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