Prologue: “The Balcony and the Dance Floor” with Marty Linsky
Before our first episode, Max sits down with the one person over 70 who knows him best — his dad.
Transcript
INTRO [0:00]
Max: Hi, I’m Max Linsky…and from Pineapple Street Studios, this is 70 over 70.
[THEME MUSIC]
So starting Thursday, I'm going to be talking to some truly incredible people, all of them over the age of 70.
I think we need to hear more from older people,especially right now. And that’s a big part of why I’m doing this show: to get some perspective from people who have experienced a lot more than the rest of us. People we can learn from.
But there’s another reason I’m doing 70 over 70, one I wasn't even aware of until recently. For a while, even after I started doing these interviews, I was struggling a little bit to pin down what I really wanted to learn myself from these conversations.
And then I had a few talks with the person over 70 who knows me best. And I started to figure it out.
[THEME MUSIC CONTINUES]
[HOSPITAL AMBIENCE FADES IN]
[00:59]
Max: Hello. All right. You ready? Uhhh, where are we?
[THEME MUSIC FADES OUT]
Marty: We're in, uh, room 1401 of the Kimmel Building at NYU Langone Hospital looking west, seeing the top of the Chrysler Building in the Empire State Building and... very, very cool view.
Max: Why uh -- why are we here?
Marty: Uh, ‘cause this morning I had a procedure…
[CLIP FADES UNDER]
Max: That's my dad. His name is Marty. It was a few days before Christmas and the hospital was quiet, basically empty. He'd just come out of surgery to fix a failing valve in his heart.
Max: Do you uh -- how do you feel?
Marty: I feel great. I just feel wonderful. I mean it -- when you hit 80 years old, you can't kid yourself anymore that you're -- you're not on the -- uh the downside. You know, um as uh my mother used to say, that's a big number. [Max laughs] On the other hand, she lived to 102, and um I love -- I Iove the life that I have.
Max: Do you feel more alive right now or less alive or the same? Does it feel the same?
Marty: There's something about this time of life, you know, when you get up, you look ahead to next week's schedule um and there's nothing on it, and you got to figure out how you're going to fill it up.
Max: What do you -- what do you mean?
Marty: I have to create a life. It’s like waking up and having a clean slate and saying what am I -- what am I going to do today?
[MUSIC STARTS]
Marty: It does feel more like starting over again than I had anticipated. It also--it also feels more glorious.
[HOSPITAL AMBIENCE FADES OUT]
[3:03]
Max: A couple of things you should know about my dad. First of all, he and I talk a lot. He asks me about my work — I’d actually been talking to him about this show for a few months at this point — and he asks me about my life. He does the same exact thing with my brother and sister. He's just one of those people who makes a habit of checking in, especially these days when he’s got less to do.
But even when he was constantly working, he always made time for conversations with people in his life who needed advice. He's good at that. And he likes it. But he’s never been great at asking for help himself. Or asking for anything, really.
[MUSIC ENDS]
[HOSPITAL AMBIENCE FADES IN]
[3:46]
Marty: Last night, um, I um-- I sent emails to, I don't know, 30 or 40 people. ‘Cause I wanted them to know I was going to have this operation today. And I took responsibility for wanting them to know that. That it is -- it sounds a little self-absorbed and selfish, you know. Uh, and it was….it was fun
Max: That does feel quite out of character.
Marty: Yes, it did feel some -- in some way out of -- out of the way I usually operate, but it felt really good. And it felt...I mean I-- the world self-indulgent comes to mind.
Max: Self-indulgent is a way to describe it, but it's also like... just being vulnerable.
Marty: Well, but it's also--yes. Yes and it's also saying to them, I care about you and I want you to know the most important thing in my life. And I--I do think, I guess, one of the--one of the reasons this time of life is so exciting to me is it feels like I'm still evolving, still learning. Inventing myself, reinventing myself.
Max: I’m--I'm surprised by how positively you're describing this time, because my experience is that it has been really hard. Because I feel like even this summer when we were talking, you had a different tone about it.
[MUSIC FADES IN]
Marty: I think the run up to being 80 was harder than being 80, you know? Uh, partially because I didn't know what to expect and partially because I don't know how we're supposed to act when you're in your 80s, you know? Um, so I think -- I think that was hard.
[HOSPITAL AMBIENCE FADES OUT]
[5:54]
Max: It was hard. It was hard for him and, to be honest, it was kinda hard to be around him.
Here’s the two of us talking a few months before that day in the hospital, on the eve of his 80th birthday.
Listen to how different his voice sounds.
[CLIPS FADES IN]
Max: Uh, what's the date today?
Marty: Uhh, August 27th 2020.
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
Max: What happens tomorrow?
Marty: Uh, it becomes August 28th, 2020. [They both laugh]
Max: What else happens tomorrow? [Marty laughs]
Marty: Uh, I don't know. We'll see.
Max: Uhh, how--how are you feeling about uh turning 80?
Marty: Well, it's pretty weird. I wanted to ask you what it feels like to watch your father get really old. How does it feel? I mean is--
Max: Well, I'm not quite willing to accept the question’s terms yet. You seem very convinced that you've gotten very old.
Marty: Yeah, I feel uh I mean, I think a lot has to do with turning 80. I think a lot has to do with covid. I think a lot has to do with, you know, feeling like I have more time on my hands, although I don't accomplish anything more. [Max laughs]
Max: Are you bored?
Marty: I don't feel bored. No. Uhh
Max: You just feel bad.
Marty: I feel old. I mean, I feel--I feel the sense of um physical, constant physical challenge. I don’t...uh-- it feels to me that the way I'm feeling now is part of the dying process, you know.
Max: Like a part of you is dying.
Marty: Well, like the -- you know -- the image I had of my dad dying the day he died was like watching a factory close at night where the lights start to go off in different parts of the building, you know. I seem to need a good night's sleep. You know if I--when I do lots of steps and my exercises, you know, I'm tired.
Max: But like to me, walking 20,000 steps and exercising on the eve of your 80th birthday and then being tired and needing a good night's sleep feels very far, to me, from the day that your dad died and the lights went out in the factory.
Marty: Yeah. Well it –
Max: But it seems close to you.
Marty: It – it seems like there's a process that started. I-- I use withdrawal as a way of uhh getting attention. It's kind of passive aggressive in some way. Um and-- and it's interesting to have this conversation on the eve of my 80th birthday because part of me really wants to celebrate. Uhh...and part of me wants to have it go by completely unnoticed.
Max: I [coughs/ clears throat] I haven't seen anything from the first part.
Marty: Well that's there's something withdrawal. I don't--I don't want to announce that I want to celebrate it.
Max: But you seem...you seem pretty down to me.
Marty: I've been feeling pretty down. I mean and I think...I feel that the playing field has shrunk, you know. It feels like the rug's been pulled out. Um...
Max: Yeah, I feel like there's some...way that I can be helpful or there for you now in a way that you had been for me my whole life, but I don't totally know what it--what it is. And, also feel like, even if you knew what it was, I’m not sure you’d tell me.
Marty: Well you know so...I don't think that I have understood very well how I want or need to be loved. And um there is some piece that I can't articulate very well, uh...
[MUSIC FADES IN]
Marty: And maybe it's because I don't want to and maybe because I really can't.
[CLIP FADES OUT]
[11:00]
Max: I'd never quite heard my dad like that before and it freaked me out. Like I said, we talk a lot. My whole life it’s felt like we’ve been having this one long continuous conversation… but now, all of a sudden it seemed like dying had become a much more real, much more immediate idea for him. And that scared me because it made me think about how much I still want to say to him. How essential this conversation of ours has been for me. So back in that hospital room, right after his heart surgery, I did what I always do. I asked him for some help.
[HOSPITAL AMBIENCE FADES IN]
[MUSIC FADES OUT]
[11:48]
Max: Can I ask you a question that might drive you a little crazy? [Yup.] You really didn’t want to get older for a long time. That was--that was my experience of you as a kid was just like you wanted to keep being an old man at bay for as long as possible.
Marty: I think partially I was scared of it because what I'd seen with my father and falling apart and -- But why do I do an hour's worth of exercises and 20,000 steps a day? Part of it is to hold off getting old, I think.
Max: But isn't there a thing if you keep obsessing about taking 20,000 steps the way you do now, that that could actually break you down?
Marty: Uh, I think that's right. You know, and I think it--it looks to the outside world as if it's just...uh OCD, right? But it doesn't feel that way to me. It feels uh...I love getting in bed and looking at my phone and seeing, you know, how many steps I did and what the weekly average was. I love that.
Max: How do you feel on the days you don't hit 20,000?
Marty: Well, there haven’t been very many of them [they both laugh] recently in the last few months, but I feel bad about myself. I feel like I failed.
Max: And at some point, you're not going to be able to do that many steps and at some point you're not going to be able to do all those exercises. Do you-- do you think about that or--
Marty: Well, I think about it. I think about it when I'm doing push ups, you know? I'm now up to 94 pushups a day. And every time I get down on the floor to do the pushups, I--I think is this going to be the day that I'm not going to make it, and I'm not going to be able to do the 94, you know. And there’ll be at some point -- I think about it all the time-- there’ll be some point where it'll be done, you know. Then I'll go on to something else. My life won't be over. It's not -- it's not who I am. It's something that I'm doing now that's giving me a lot of satisfaction and it'll be ending at some point.
Max: You seem so like healthy and Zen'd out about it. Makes me wonder what the hell I'm doing with this uh project. [Marty laughs]
Marty: I don't know what you’re doing with this project either [laughs], um but you'll figure it out.
Max: You have a theory?
Marty: I don't. I don't. I think the only theory that I have is that it has something to do with seeing your life as a journey that is -- doesn't go down hill--but evolves in different ways. And I wish I had -- I think I would have had more joy in my life if I had been able to think about it that way. And I think it’s very hard to be both
[15:00]
totally present and to be able to think about that, you know. And I think sometimes I was too preoccupied.
Max: Do you think that I'm wired the same way? Do you think I -- do you see that in me too? Being too preoccupied to be present?
Marty: I would like to think, you know, this is completely self-congratulatory, but I would like to think that you’ve used me to help you see patterns and tendencies that it would be harder for you to see if you were immersed -- immersed in them...to go back and forth from the metaphor that we use: the balcony and the dance floor. But I don’t know why that would have so piqued your curiosity in some of the people that you’re talking to.
Max: I think it’s just... I also might just be real scared of you dying.
Marty: Well, what's the -- what's the fear? What are you -- what are you afraid of?
Max: That it's unknown. The only thing that I have known is having you there, knowing I can talk anything out. I think for me, not knowing how much time there is left to do that is--is really scary; and then what's on the other side feels kind of impossible. Like how to move between the balcony and the dance floor without you.
Marty: The incalculable joy I get from our relationship..the idea of not experiencing that is… uh hugely frightening to me. On the other hand, I have so much confidence in your capacity for managing that--making the most out of it uh-- after I'm gone, that I don't -- I don't worry about it. I don't worry about it at all. You'll--you’ll find ways to continue to keep our conversation going long after I've stopped breathing. I don't have any question about that…..maybe that's what you're doing with the show; is trying to figure out what--what it means to…um no, I don’t know. I don’t--
Max: What were you gonna say?
Marty: Well, I was saying what it means to let go.
[HOSPITAL AMBIENCE FADE OUTS]
[MUSIC STARTS]
[18:18]
Max: He’s right. My whole life he’s been able to do that, to help me realize what I’m looking for, to see what I'm missing. And this show, 70 over 70, it is about letting go.
But I don't think it’s just about loss. These conversations I want to have – they’re not really about dying. They’re about what it means to live well.
For as long as I've been having these talks with my dad, I've had this feeling that life was something you could solve. That it was a test of some kind. That someone somewhere had all the answers, and the point was to go find them.
Basically, I thought there were people out there who had it all figured out. And I really wanted to be one myself.
But as I've gotten older and looked at lots and lots of places for those answers, I've very slowly started to realize that nobody has it all figured out.
Sounds obvious maybe, but it hasn’t been to me.
So if there is no one right way to live, no universal set of answers, no single fix … what do you do with that?
Well, if you’re me, you talk it out. It’s what my dad taught me to do when I was looking for an answer, even if that answer didn’t totally exist.
And maybe that’s the best way to describe what 70 over 70 is: it’s me trying to take this conversation I've been having with my dad and continue it, to talk it out, with people who might have some perspective that all of us could use.
I want to hear what answers they’ve found, and which ones they’re still looking for. I want to know if there is a gap between how the world sees them and how they see themselves. I want to understand what it means to them to live well... and to let go.
[MUSIC BUILDS]
Max: 70 over 70 starts Thursday. Thanks for listening.
[MUSIC FADE OUT]
END [20:39]