The Fourth Quarter Of The Game

Thoughts Upon Turning Seventy

Jun 27, 2025

The picture above was taken by my good friend Sal Guitarez at a gig in Hollywood on June 8th of this year. This is what I can look like these days. In kind stage lighting, with a mic and guitar.

Sal swears that he used no ‘beautification’ filters. Except the one that every photographer uses if he or she wants to please the subject. And that is to ‘filter out’ all of the least flattering shots before sending the good ones along.

It may have taken him a dozen to get this one. But hey I’ll take it. Of course, I was a younger man then. Enjoying the last couple of weeks of my late sixties. My extremely late sixties.

You see, on June 20th, the day of the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year, I turned seventy. I still can’t wrap my head around that fact. I can’t pass myself off as ‘middle aged’ anymore. Those days are gone. I’m now an old man. No getting around it.

I had 5 grandparents. On my mom’s side, Daniel and Mary. And on my dad’s side, Ralph and his two wives, Nina - my dad’s mom - and June who came later. All five lived in Southern California, and I watched all of them grow old. But not one of them hit eighty. I had no grandparents at all by the time I graduated high-school.

On the other hand, both of my parents lived past ninety. Dad made 91, and Mom 94. And both were fit and ‘spry’ into their eighties. I don’t see any reason that I can’t continue this trend of increasing longevity, being viable for another twenty years or more. And medical science might …

But, lets be real here, I’m most likely already past the 3/4 mark of my life.

This isn’t the end of the line … but I can see it from here.

The show we did last weekend was billed - by me - as a ‘Summer 2025 Launch Party’. I had myself in as opening act. No picture of me on the flyer. No mention of my birthday. But my partner in these events did mention it in her email blasts … so the word was out.

Traditionally, I ignore my birthdays. As they almost always closely coincide with Father’s Day, it’s been easy for everybody to forget about me having lapped the sun one more time. And that suited me fine, especially once I was over forty, and divorced, and back on the dating market.

I wasn’t ever a particularly handsome guy, but I’ve always been at least slightly better than average, I suppose. Slightly. My late-arriving internet ‘fame’ caught me at the dawn of my sixties. Old enough to know things and how to present those things … but young enough to occasionally inspire a crush. I got more than a few proposals, though often with tongue in cheek.

Anyway, I was seen as at least somewhat worthy of a lady’s attentions. Internet notoriety, may be low-level as these things go, but it’s certainly better than the off-to-the-side-in-a-darkened-corner level of a Substack dude with 400 subscribers.

Sadly, only two factors can reliably keep a guy in his seventies in the ‘plus column’. Money/security and fame/renown. Which is not to say that I can’t somehow get lucky on rare occasion, but it is to say that counting on it would be emotional self-harm.

However, when I have a strong set, like I did Saturday in Pasadena, I apparently glow for a few hours afterward. Even in the fourth quarter of life, a touch-down is a touch-down.

And shortly after I left the stage Saturday night, as the crowd took a break for birthday cake and conversation, a very attractive dark-haired woman locked onto me. I’d never seen her before. And she had just arrived. Hadn’t even seen my set. But there she was, close by, as any number of people streamed past. Wishing me well. Congratulating me on my performance.

The combination of self-confidence and humility in the face of praise, served - I’m guessing here - to make me younger, and more magnetic than I really am. Again, kind-lighting played a part, as the sun was setting lovely beyond the Craftsman houses that encircled the concert area. For whatever reason, she stuck around.

And for a couple of hours, I basked in this woman’s attention. It felt like instant connection. Finishing each others’ sentences. Blurting out confessions of unheroic deeds. That effortless sort of strangers-on-a-train intimacy that feels like love warming up its engines.

Up close, I could see that she wasn’t as young as I’d initially thought. Turns out that she’d only just had a milestone birthday herself.

She’s almost exactly ten years younger than I am. Cool, I thought. That’s not insurmountable! After all, my dad was ten years older than my mom, and it was never a problem. Maybe I’m getting a new romance for my birthday? Stranger things have happened!

(this is where we insert that sound effect of a phonograph needle being abruptly scraped across the record)

Yeah. Reality Check time. There is a vast difference between a rakish and charming 30 year old - like my father was - dazzling a smart but green 20 year-old like my mom …. and a white-haired under-the radar musician like me, laying the charm on a woman in the waning years of her own considerable adorability.

We exchanged info when the night was over. A warm hug.

And I never expect to hear from her again. The single mitigating factor of advancing age is that one is no longer required to lie to one’s self. And so I won’t.

Being made occasionally ridiculous is the price we pay for imagination.

The week leading up to my ‘2025 Old-Age Launch Party’, would have exhausted many men half my age. I began the week, helping a musician friend install two window air conditioners in her house. It was a blazing hot cloudless day … no kind lighting. I paced myself, and my back held up fine, but I’m sure that I seemed maximally old to this very capable - and strong - 40ish woman.

Still … I showed up, when others didn’t.

Next day, I gathered all of the necessary lumber and hardware, and waded into building the four stage-risers we’d need for the show, (my existing risers having been un-existed by the Eaton Fire). ‘Twas another 90° day. Put in five or six hours in partial shade. Finished that build the next day in similar heat.

Next day after that, Thursday, I raided the paint-store, sanded the sharp edges, and applied 3 coats of gray satin to the new risers. That’s more complicated than you’d think when you’re working in a make-shift paint-shop at the site of the show, being uber-careful not to spill a drop.

Also on Thursday, I shopped and chopped. All of the canned goods and peppers and onions and spices I’d need for my legendary chili. I also retrieved our sixty folding chairs from storage and stacked them on-site.

And on Friday I cooked for eighty, as the RSVPs had been brisk. If you don’t think that’s a job, I invite you to brown 15 lbs. of ground beef sometime. Followed by the opening of dozens of cans, the careful allotment of ingredients into the two huge pots, and 90 watchful minutes, bringing the cauldrons gingerly to the boiling point.

This day, like most all of my days do, ended with a fast walk. 2 miles up to Woodbury and 2 miles back. As the chili simmered sweetly, and the air cooled at last.

You’ve likely heard me speak of my motto: ‘Something to look forward to … something to live up to’. I drive myself - when I do drive myself - according to that simple formula. With the proper degree of pleasurable anticipation, I’m capable still, of a pretty impressive work-load.

But as we’ve established, I’m not getting any younger. After the satisfying evening of June 21. After I’d released that dark-haired beauty back to her previous Daveless existence. After I’d gathered up my lighting gear, and my video gear, and my photo gear, and helped John Stowers to load out the massive PA system that he’d been kind enough to bring. After the risers had been stashed and the chairs had been stacked. After lugging out leftovers given me by Alexia, who was still finishing up her equally long list of chores. And after the commons of Fair Oaks Court had been restored to the bucolic splendor expected by Sunday morning’s churchgoing neighbors … I drove slowly home to my temporary digs.

And that is the last that anybody saw of me for 48 hours. Sure, I can still get it on like a younger man, but I am an older man for sure. Other than battling vicious leg-cramps in the wee hours, I barely moved until Sunday night. And Monday was also a near-total write off.

All of this is to say that I can still do this stuff when sufficiently motivated, but that there are costs. And I’d sooner rest when indicated, than burn myself out.

There are, though, some other things I do to maintain physical functioning here on the downslope. One of those things is tackling upslopes. My daily power-hikes through the hills may not stop the clock, but they have sure made my knees stronger and given me the wind of a forty-year-old athlete.

Late Wednesday afternoon, June 25, Alexia and I finally returned our 60 chairs to their storage in Hastings Ranch, and then went looking for a hike. The trails out of Sierra Madre were still closed, so we took to the winding streets of Sierra Madre Canyon. This is serious uphill stuff. And we are not known to hike in silence.

It’s a sight, two oldsters going uphill at such a pace, while discussing the events and implications of this mad mad world. And commenting, as well, on every charming hippie dwelling as contrasted with newer, more palatial accommodations.

As we noted, “the difference between people who want to live like royalty … and people who want to live like Hobbits.”

When finally we found our way back to where we’d parked the Honda, Alexia’s fitness app told us that we’d walked 4 miles and climbed the equivalent of 36 flights of stairs.

There are no fountains of youth, but a daily regimen of brisk self-locomotion comes pretty close.

Naps too, are a magic elixir. I didn’t have time for naps during that pre-event week. But if I had, my post-gig coma would probably have been cut in half. It’s astonishing how little time it takes to reboot and recharge. Fifteen minutes will usually do the trick.

I’m still working on the diet part of my plan to live forever. I probably need more protein. Especially now that I’m making light dumbbell workouts a daily commitment. I’m not looking to do the ‘ripped at seventy’ thing popular in the TikTok/Instagram/YouTube manosphere. All of that looks as pathetic as I sometimes feel.

Desperate overcompensation is not charismatic. Remember that, fellas.

No, the trick is not to forestall the inevitable, but to brace up the bones with as balanced a musculature as seems fitting to the desired function.

I write and play guitar and sing. I move some equipment around, sure, but not like those weathered yellow skip-loaders still grunting away in the ruins of Altadena and Pacific Palisades.

I’m rebuilding a life here, not trying to become a super-hero.

Is it fair to say that clinging to one’s ‘prime’, might be the only thing holding off the next prime? Could it be that there are a series of renewals available to the self-aware human?

For several years, I’ve been doing the prep-work for my next prime . No that’s wrong. The prep-work’s been going on for as long as I can remember. I just haven’t always known it as such. But for several years it’s been a conscious process. Readying myself for the role of elder.

When I was a younger man, I greatly benefitted from the older men who happened into my life, and helped enormously in my coming to terms with what could not be undone, and what might still be accomplished.

Ed in particular, when I was trying to sober up and adjust to the realities of a wife and kids and the solo-craftsman career that had chosen me. His off-hand wisdom was a life-saver. To this day, I hear his voice: “What I suspect is happening here, Davey, is that …”.

He was 40 years my senior, and saw in me a younger version of himself. He never imposed an idea on me, but he never refused counsel when I asked for it.

My ace in the hole, as the mirror disappoints and loneliness sometimes pools around me … is knowing that I might someday be as valuable a mentor as Ed was for me.

I figure that if I keep logging the miles. If I keep pushing back against the weight. If I keep my voice and fingers fit to the rigors of song. If I just keep showing up, and being of some noticeable service … I’ll be ready when the last bell rings and the lights go out in the arena.

Thanks for reading - Dave

Morrison At Large

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