The aging process

Harking back to a previous post of mine to do with reminiscing, I will now do a bit of that myself, but as this is in the privacy of my own blog site, I consider it acceptable, as anyone reading this has entered the site of their own free will, not because a TV station has directed them there! My thoughts ran to our "lost youth" after I bought and watched a Beach Boys concert footage DVD entitled "The Lost Concert". The cover of the DVD describes the circumstances of the release of this footage as being the result of a concert in the US in 1964 taped live on closed-circuit TV to the audience at the theatre.
Bear in mind that at that time (in 1964) we were still blissfully unaware of a future that would include video, CD's, DVD's, home computers, in fact ANYTHING computerised, so the fact that they used the closed-circuit TV at that particular concert was pretty damned enlightened! In fact one of my (as a 13 year old ) dreams at that time was for someone to invent, somehow, some sort of machine to capture my favourite pop stars singing and performing so I could actually see them 'in person' on the screen as it were!
Technologically, in the Huon in the 50's and 60's, reel-to-reel tape was about it if you wanted to duplicate the sounds of your favourite songs. Of course there was the option of records, but we ARE talking the 50's and 60's, and at that point in time, there was still that amount of (to quote Aretha Franklin) RESPECT for (and scaredness of) your elders and betters (ie the older generation) that you knew better than to ask your parents if you could use their record player to play your one single record of Cliff Richard singing "Living Doll" or Richard Chamberlain (at that time time playing TV's No 1 heart-throb, Dr Kildare) singing the theme song from his TV series.

Anyway - to get back to the point of this post - watching the Beach Boys on that footage from 1964, and that being my formative teenage time, I was swept by a wave of nostalgia and pain for this lost youth of ours, and by 'ours', I mean the collective 'ours'.
I looked at those 5 extremely youthful-looking boys on stage there, wearing their matching outfits (as was the fashion for pop groups then), slim, fit, slightly nervous, harmonising together, glancing guiltily at each other when someone made a mistake and I thought about various articles I've read about those boys in the intervening years, and TV specials I watched about their lives. So - there they were round the start of their careers as pop stars anmd musicians, and here am I 43 years later watching this and knowing what these boys subsequently went through, and what they look like now, as old men looking very much the worse for wear, if indeed they managed to stay alive, which a few didn't.

It really saddens me to observe how humans age and change physically, most often not in a pleasing way. That is not a rule of thumb though. Some people get better and better looking as they get older. Some people mature very nicely - like Germaine Greer. She looked great in the 60's, and I think she looks great now, not in that young, vital way of the past, but in a more topical 'mature' kind of way. Definitely not a 'perm and slippers' type of aging for our Germaine! Nor did she achieve it, by the way, having the cosmetic interventions that seem to be becoming the norm for people of all ages these days. (I saw an interview with Joan Rivers the other day where she said that her friend Cher had had so many face-lifts that she now poos out her ears!)
Blokes, when they develop either the big 'pot' tummy; loose the top hair or develop that 'full face & throat' look, look pretty unappetising, I reckon.
I'm not saying women equally can't look gross either cos they can & do.
As I am inside my own body, I can't tell how I myself am doing physically, but my fervent hope is that it's not too bad in the scheme of things.