34. Rethinking creative aging: Jo Randerson on being soft, hard, and invisible when old

In this episode of How To Be Old, I chat with Jo Randerson, playwright, actor, director, and author of Secret Art Powers: How Creative Thinking Can Achieve Radical Change. Through Jo's eyes, we see aging as a continuing creative practice: a chance to notice, laugh, reframe, and stay astonished by the world.

Her five secret art powers are all extremely useful as you get older. Jo says, “The creative approach is to accept the reality that we are in and to find a way to work alongside it that is fun, clear, truthful, frame-changing. [...] How do I make the best of where I am right now?”

Jo raises some crucial questions. As we age, do we get physically and emotionally softer or harder — or both? Feeling invisible because of our age can hurt, but can we make the most of its new  opportunities? Why do we focus on the negative? Why do we need the binary concepts of “old” and “young” when there are so many shades in between? Do the phrases “aging successfully” and “creative aging” make some people feel like failures? And how should I respond to feedback from my children when I start spilling food down my front?

Sometimes I feel like I can do a stealth attack. Because people have already written you off in a way and they go, "There's that older grey lady” — of which I am one — and then people are like "Holy heck, what did you see what that old white lady in the corner did?" Hopefully not something very embarrassing. (Jo Randerson)

Community arts case study: Sing it to My Face

Barbarian. More about Jo Randerson's work