TT Journal, ISSUE 7, September 2024

By Rose Rouse

‘I could feel my chronology mounting, snow approaching. I could feel the moon but not see it.’ Patti Smith in M Train.

Patti is a heroine to people like me who hate heroines, pedestals, guru-worship. Those of us who prefer to kick down the statues. And this case, an older woman – I am 71, Patti is 77 – ahead of me along the voyage of living life and touching into death. There’s something reassuring about having someone ahead who adheres to the same ethos around age. And who is rocking it. Vivienne Westwood was the same. Forever funky, yet no bowing to societal pressures to worship a young look.

It’s the accepting-flaws way. No accident that I prefer Sid’s version rather than Frank’s. An accepting of a bones and blood way. A surrender to the changes that oldness brings. The liver spots, the lines, the libido loss and more. And a bit of rebellion – trying out the vaginal oestrogen, keeping on with singles at tennis, still dancing a lot. Still singing with my body and mind – through poems, nature, wandering, dance, plants, making films with my son, through friendships with the youngers.

Notes on the Lure

We squat beneath a black umbrella in Morfa Bychan

as the much younger pair strip off,

naked amid the pelt and fury of drip and howl,

charge into the winter sea’s dirty horses.

My niece banshee-cries the name of her dead friend,

posy aloft – mermaid’s purse, heart’s tongue,

                                                                          razor shell.

Wild is a drug

these olders have tasted many times before.

We laugh at the implausibility

of letting go,

explore the plateau-pleasure of stepping back,

observe the lightness of their towels.

What’s in a name? So much. Seniors, pensioners, grannies, gramps – no thanks. Because they conjure up all the negatives- the apparent sell by date, the predicted decline, those signs of walking with sticks, those frailty tests in hospital. All the cliches of how society here denigrates age. Ian McEwan prefers Oldster. I like it too. Of course, the echoes of hipster. Olders is preferred by Ashton Applewhite, an American age activist. It’s good. And open enough. And then there’s elder and eldership. I know there’s a need for tribal elders and their role as guides for the youth but and it’s a big BUT, the term elder smacks of wisdom superiority. This is a kind of arrogance that can arrive with age, a kind of we-know-and-therefore-we-don’t-need-to- know-more. I believe that we need to pursue curiosity until we die. And that’s what keeps us supremely alive and kicking.

I haven’t proclaimed it yet but I co-founded – with jazz singer and serial entrepreneur, Suzanne Noble – Advantages of Age, a social enterprise that challenges the media narrative around ageing. We were five women in a hot tub in Kilburn between the ages of 46 and 64. Seven years ago. There is a legendary painting to prove it. All involved in dynamic, creative projects – from writing novels to photography to poems – we couldn’t relate to media concepts of ageing; the sags, the constant need to re-juvenate, the lack of associations with vitality. The deep unsexiness. Advantages of Age was born. It isn’t only about the advantages but that’s where we want to put the focus.

An overriding advantage is the don’t give a fuckery what others think. There is liberation in that for this demographic that is on the rise – according the Centre for Ageing Better there are 11 million people aged 65 and in ten years’ time, this will have increased to 13 million, 22% of the population. Being part of a tribe – Sunday Times’ Style magazine called us ‘the punks of getting older’ and we liked that – is truly the way I have found to relish getting older. And encouraging each other to express ourselves creatively is very much part of our ethos.

We’re interested in the taboos too. Because taboos are where the juice is. And where society often needs to change. Death and sex are high on our agenda for opening up the boxes and having a look inside. I remember at one point a few years ago, I was frequently visiting my mother who had Alzheimer’s at the same time as having sex with my new partner. Fortunately, the care home had a wonderful – let-them-roam philosophy and my partner was also known to occasionally accompany me on these jaunts. My mother loved that. She’d always adored men.

a song for an old woman

portent

those funny names on narrow boats

willows with their long love notes

my mother licks her ice-cream

lashes out at the hawthorn

mummy  mummy  i want my mummy

i semi-drag her to the car

             

the roaming philosophy at wardington house

today she’s a reet little magpie

in and out of other bedrooms

two birthday cards

the porcelain cat with a silly smile

a tome on canal engineering

             

nancy and rose show

mother and daughter bow to each other

amidst woundwort ragged robin and loosestrife

she is reluctant anxious and funny

we make our own music

seventeenth century for harpsichord

                                                                   and violin

there are hand flourishes

in rounds of perpetual honouring

that purple anorak her auburn locks

                                                                   my henna

former enemies unfurl

 

kiss

 my son and I can no longer get her with cake

 no more trying on of ridiculous hats

 he rubs her feet

 i take the weight of her skull

 your hands are so warm

she pecks my cheek

out-of-the-blue out-of-the-blue  out-of-the-blue

dementia-sweetness   sweet at last

      

turn

latterly her nos have a different tone

she’s forgotten how to walk

supported on both sides she wavers

at the top of the stairs

an animal stepping on a trap

bed becomes an asylum

song

I sing it for you  I sing it for me

I can’t sing

let me wash your feet

let me stroke your hair

let me kiss your forehead

cheek to cheek  skin to skin  mother to daughter

Following the taboo trail, we received an Arts Council England Award to explore sex, death and flamboyance through performance. We even had mini-salons in the hot tub and streamed them live on Facebook. Out-ageous Style with outrageous stylist Johnny Blue Eyes, Tantra with writer of the sexy Tryst, Monique Roffey, Death with psychotherapist, Caroline Bobby and death mask maker, Nick Reynolds. The mini-salons were preparation for our Death Dinner performance and film, our Taboo Night Club at Vout-O-Renees and our Flamboyant Forever open top bus tour of Chelsea and Hyde Park!

For Death Dinner, we were given permission to use the Dissenter’s Chapel and Gallery in Kensal Green Cemetery, one of London’s Magnificent Seven Victorian graveyards. And a place I keep returning to – for walks during Covid times with my friend Nikki who has now died too soon, for another performance and film called Dance Me To Death and for deep solace. The idea for Death Dinner was to invite ten people from Death World – death doula and Death Café organiser, Caroline Dent, psychotherapist Caroline Bobby who wrote a piece for AofA called Dreaming of Death, soul midwife, Patrick Ardagh-Walter, natural burial ground owner, Liz Rothschild, death ritual expert, Douglas Davies, journalist Liz Hoggard, mortician and author, Carla Valentine-Blythe, Cross Bones Cemetery campaigner, John Crow, Portobello photographer who has documented British Caribbean funerals for year, Charlie Phillips – to come dressed as they would like to be buried or burnt. And they did.

There were Memento Mori photographs of everyone accompanied by the object they’d chosen to be buried or burnt with. Mine was a small statue of a couple embracing that a close friend had given me to symbolise relationships in my life. There was a crossing over the threshold greeted by the Queen of the Night, on this occasion, attired in all white with wings, who also ceremonially smudged as preparation for this evening. Ethereal cello sounds floated through. There was an abundant feast on the round table. Questions like – what is a good death to you – were asked by my co-founder and I. The aim was to have an open dialogue about the possibilities around death, the subjects we so often avoid. And for the film to provide a discussion forum in the future.

At the end, we were able to descend to the catacombs. Down the dank steps lay another world of the dead now illuminated by small candles. The Queen of the Night was already there. One by one the participants appeared. She whispered – How would it be if you died tomorrow? Questions for the future as we know death is approaching. Something we wish to embrace as a tribe, as a community, with vulnerability and courage.

The Taboo Nightclub was more about sex, fun and rebellion. At Vout-O-Renees in Shoreditch, we had a film playing of older people exploring their sexuality showing older bodies and the delight of older sex. We had poems and the Naked Poet. I read my poem The Making Love Retreat which my partner and I had attended. We had performance artist, Debra Watson doing her show on dating in her 50s. We had an open mic on taboo stuff these older people were doing. Of course, we had dancing.

the making love retreat

the venue for this seven day non-sexathon

is a former camembert factory in normandy

yellow ash leaves float onto the lake

i request that he carry my battered leather bag

an exercise in gallantry-as tantric-technique

over an exotically leafy dinner next to a roaring fire

we are invited to discuss the nature of soft penetration

as other guests would consider the price of property

a relaxed penis is an equally valid instrument

no-one utters an oooh or an aahh

there are lessons on the love keys

naked lunches à deux sur le balcon

time spent ‘being emotional’ in a rowing boat

the peak experience is holding a finger

on my partner’s perineum  he’s very pleased

after instruction sessions covering the various positions

afternoons are dedicated to private practice

la clé d’ une sexualité épanouie est d’enfaire moins

sometimes  we fall asleep  wake curled around one another

the walls emanate whiff de fromage

And finally, we had the Flamboyant Forever Open Double Decker Bus Tour. The idea was that we don’t have to be blind followers of fashion as we get older, we can be style queens. In our own DIY way. We put out the invitations out and waited to see what happened. We had no idea whether anyone would turn up. We waited in Sloane Square and eighty oldsters decked out in wild and wonderful outfits, hats, head dresses, sequinned hot pants, pink feathers, gaudy necklaces arrived. The marvellous in action. There was a boom box and stop offs for strutting. Outside Sex – the Westwood shop in World’s End, of course. At Hyde Park. But most importantly friendships were created, threads woven, a flow of dialogue was begun. An Advantages of Age community was emerging.

There were festivals – we read at Queen’s Park Festival, Stoke Newington – there were screenings of the film – the Pathology Museum, the Byline Festival and more – there were more club nights.

And then there was the performance and film Dance Me To Death. Back to the graveyard – Kensal Green Cemetery. There’s a lot of circling back and re-visiting. This time as a group of Over-60s non-professional dancers with the same incredible cellist, Fran Loze and percussionist, Mark Fisher. And the young choreographers, Rhys Dennis and Waddah Sinada from FUBUNATION. Emboldened by our Arts Council grant in 2017, I applied on my own. It can be a lonely task. I wanted to explore death and dying through morning workshops that encouraged ritual – we always had a shrine, we shared thoughts about our grief objects – and then turned those reflections, emotions, poems into movements. The ritual aspect was important to me. This was 2021 – deep Covid time, and I was aware that a particular area near where I lived in Harlesden, had a very high numbers of deaths in 2020 – Church End Road where there are many British Somali families had lost 36 people. I wanted to make sure we honoured them too. I brought in a photograph of Hassan Farah, a local much revered teacher who had died.

We auditioned the dancers so we got to know them a little as well as their movements. It was crucial to me that the participants were open to the morning workshops where we shared our feelings as we leant into death and dying in a more personal way. And that we represented a broad spectrum in terms of spirituality. And we did – from one dancer who was a Chishti Sufi to Christians, atheists and the pagan-leaning. I am more the latter, but I remember feeling a shudder of envy when Christians in the group said passionately that they weren’t worried about dying because they knew that God would look after them. Such faith I had never known.

We went on a voyage together and it was intense. Trying to find our dance together. Responding to Rhys and Waddah’s suggestions – for the duets, you move, I move, for instance. And then Vince Bartlett and I deciding to dispense with the mechanics and go for seeing into each other’s hearts. Me insisting on a procession where we carried objects or photos of our loved ones who had died and we wanted to honour. I wanted us to carry this grief into the crowd who were awaiting us in the cemetery at the grand pillared entrance – although now sadly adorned with health and safety wire fences – of the Anglican Chapel. And we did. There were tears before we even arrived.

The film was filmed on a different day and its focus is more on the performance, the lush secret locations and the film itself as a medium. The Operations Manager of the cemetery – it’s owned by a private company – allowed us to venture behind the wire fence at the Anglican Chapel which is the place that I’d always dreamt of using. I have a jig of the heart every time I see Sandria Terrelonge in her deep red dress and Anthony Reay is his dark suit doing their lyrical duet of longing and mourning right there in the forbidden zone. We took slow steps around them to mark their dance. There has been a lot of ritual circling in these projects.

And more recently we met again to do a workshop and were thrilled that our bodies still storied this shared history of performance, intimacy and dance.

Trailer for the film Dance Me To Death by Marlon Rouse Tavares

a prayer to the unseen

three years later  st mark’s church

we gather  eight dancers and a choreographer

move across this stained wooden floor

re-ignite something cellular lightly

unexpected in its hold

much more than these old bodies knew

a collective story for the stars

cosmos in our feet

we shape-shift in and out of each other’s limbs

vince duetted with me in kensal green cemetery

bettina talked of a hand held before a last breath

a terpsichorean dictionary of death

our arms rise slowly in a collective sigh

an instinctive om

my heart finds a new god

Which brings me round in another circle to Sex, Death and Other Inspiring Stories – this is our Advantages of Age anthology which is very much the voices of our community contributing to our library of Doing Ageing Differently. These are articles that I have commissioned over the last six years for the website which are now on our new Substack platform.

Even more circles – psychotherapist Caroline Bobby who was part of our Death Dinner writes in Dreaming of Death – ‘One of my roads not travelled, is a heart-house funeral service. I see it quite vividly: big house, gardens, bodies received and tended to, families and friends cared for, groups, prayers and rituals of all and no denomination, community, art, music. Above all else, space held for the ravaged beauty of death and dying: kind, compassionate and human space for this utterly human experience. I’m a death wife in my soul. And a birth wife, so to speak, because that borderland of first and last breath, is my kind of land. I like it there. It’s simple and quiet. And intimate. And when you’re there, there’s nowhere else you can be.’

Or woman of the north and estate car, Ruth Fox from Sheffield who likes to hang out in her magnolia tree as well as do wild solo travels into magical terrains. ‘One of the reasons I often prefer to encounter the world alone is because most people, when they go together, for a walk or a journey, unconsciously collude with each other to maintain the ordinary, the usual.’

‘Decisions are made on my inklings and urges, fantasies and on weather forecasts. Or a sudden yearning for something like driving eight miles to a shop for one of the best pies I had ever had – to get one again. Then an onward journey beyond the pie shop that took me somewhere else. To ancient stones and to a lighthouse where the land ends and the wind has free reign.’

Or Older Women Rock, a group created by poet, artist and activist, Leah Wood in Folkestone – where rage about ageist cliches is expressed through words on clothes and subversive cat walk shows. I have one of their jackets – I took the train from St Pancras specifically to go to one of their pop ups – it is a magnificent faux leather black fuck you to the idea that women in their 70s settle into comfortable beiges. It has dazzling epaulettes made out of shiny metal with inlaid glass gems and the words – Lines on him are character, on her a flaw.

To create this poetic clothing, Leah collaborated with the Profanity Embroidery Group.

Part of one of Leah’s poems – Vulva lost its youthful lustre?

                                                       Want a quick fix?

                                                       Try My New Pink Button,

                                                       rouge for labial lips

was interpreted by Annie Taylor onto a vintage negligee which looks enticingly vulvic.

And Caroline Dent introduces us to her Beloved River, the Lea in Hackney, that is her beloved healing river. ‘I was in a period of intense overwhelm. The advent of menopause had brought with it a deluge of tears, which begged for release, and over time, these journeys morphed into grief rituals that felt both cleansing and healing as the river received my tears again and again.’

Caroline cycled for hours at a time. ‘There was something about the rhythm of cycling, the continuous turning of the wheels, no beginning and no ending, that was very much in alignment with the flow of the river itself, and also in alignment with some deep need within myself, too.’

And back to my own piece on re-imagining old, re-defining old, allowing ourselves to be old.

‘Imagine if old evoked beautiful, spirited, creative, energetic, loving, wild, free, sensual, compassionate, fascinating, real, all-embracing and was therefore something we looked forward to. We are old. I am old. I look older. But there is a choice there. I can look interesting and old. Or creative and old. Or sexy (yes, I know we don’t want the pressure but, hey, it’s still possible) and old. Or working in a fabulous job. And dancing and old. And a brilliant grandmother and old. Or a spirited leader and older. The possibilities are endless if we let them be. Yes to re-envisioning old. Will you?’

And circling back to Patti and no quick fixes.

‘I’m still the same person, I thought, with all my flaws intact, same old bony knees, thanks be to God.’ M Train

Rose Rouse is a poet, editor, dancer and co-founder of the social enterprise Advantages of Age which challenges the media narrative around ageing.  She has published four non-fiction books including A London Safari – walking adventures in NW10 which includes a foreword by Louis Theroux. She also made two dance films Dance Willesden Junction and Dance Harlesden with her son, Marlon Rouse Tavares. In 2017, Advantages of Age were awarded an Arts Council grant to create a series of performances that questioned issues around age which included the film Death Dinner: this was followed by the project with Over 60s dancers Dance Me To Death in 2021. She has a poetry pamphlet Tantric Goddess ( Eyewear) and recently edited the anthology Sex, Death and Other Inspiring Stories.  roserouse.co.uk

You can find Advantages of Age piece at advantagesofage.substack.com
FB – Advantages of Age – Baby Boomers and Beyond
Instagram – @advantagesofage
Sex, Death and Other Inspiring Stories can be bought on Amazon.

Featured photo: still of Sandria Terrelonge and Anthony Reay from Dance Me To Death by Marlon Rouse Tavares