Show Overview
In my last show, I talked with Andrew Belser, who is presently a professor of Movement, Voice, and Acting at Penn State University. Andrew is also the creator of an award winning video program called FaceAge that shows young and older adults interacting knee-to-knee, nose-to-nose almost, while studying and describing one another’s faces. It is a deeply moving work that challenges perceptions about what it means to be “old,” fosters introspection, and builds acceptance, awareness, and cross-generational connections. I had the chance to experience FaceAge in DC earlier this year, and it quite frankly moved me to tears.
In part one of my talk with Andrew, we heard him tell us what FaceAge is and about its power to affect perceptions. In the part two of our interview, which you are about to hear, Andrew tells us more about the neuroscience behind FaceAge, and a little bit about his personal story, and how an encounter with his older Uncle on a rooftop changed his life. So please join me in Part Two of my interview with Andrew Belser of FaceAge.
I encourage all of you to experience FaceAge in person if you can, and if you are interested in having FaceAge to your city, check out the show notes for a way to contact Greg Wolf, the former CEO of Humana, who coordinates FaceAge exhibitions. Greg is a great guy and he can tell you all about how FaceAge is more than just a video program, but also includes training for organizations that want to do more to promote intergenerational connections. A good thing, me thinks.
What you will learn from Andrew Belser of FaceAge:
- How memories are preserved in the body
- The gift of his father’s death
- How digitally aging his own face affected him
- How we both feel about getting old
- Cat Steven’s song Father and Son
- Has aging taken the edge off him as an artist?
- How do Mick Jagger and Roger Daltry of The Who keep going?
- Pennsylvania Convention Center at National Meeting of LeadingAge
- FaceAge as a platform for training
- What Andrew has learned from millennials
- How technology shapes the nervous system
- How his sons would respond if they had to leave their phones at home
- How Facebook was depressing me
- 95% of marriage problems could be solved with knee-to-knee conversations
- How close, personal, intimate relationships are essential to human thriving
- How technology is contributing to the national rancor
- The Anatomy of Loneliness
Products Mentioned in this Show:
Some of the links found in my show notes lead to places where you can purchase the product mentioned. In most cases I earn a commission at no extra cost to you if you do choose to purchase. Buying products through my links is one way you can help me to keep the show going, with my thanks. If you have any questions related to the product, please let me know and I’ll do my best to answer them. Just write me at brant (at) danbra (dot) com. Thank you!
Bring FaceAge to Your City!
To learn more about how to bring FaceAge to your city, and the associated opportunities for intergenerational training, please contact Greg Wolf at gregorywolfwmg [at] gmail [dot] com
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I Am a Racist
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.
Mark Twain
I often hear nowadays, people being accused.
“He’s a racist.”
“She’s a racist.”
“Trump’s a racist.”
“So and so’s a racist.”
What I have yet to hear is: “I am a racist.”
So let me be the first.
I am a racist.
Yes.
I see the ugly thing, creeping around my soul like a roach in the kitchen. I squash it, but sometime later, there it is again.
I know there is a nest somewhere, eggs hatching, a source deep within me, hidden away where it’s easy to deny. There is where I'll find the library of my false beliefs, the lies I tell myself over and over, so often they become grooves cut into my gray matter, like fissures in rock where the water runs down, cutting deeper and deeper, until fissures become swales, and swales become canyons.
When did the first racist raindrop fall? I don’t know. As a child, for sure. How many drops of poison does it take to pollute the vessel of pure water of which we are born? When, exactly, does a person become a racist, and who gets to decide?
I don’t know, but then, neither does anyone else.
I don’t believe in permanence. That’s one thing the Buddhists have taught me.
Everything changes.
We can become aware of that library of false beliefs, that nest of nasties that colors our perception of things, often for the worse. Awareness alone brings change. We can cut new grooves. My challenge as a human being is not to deny that I am a racist, for that would be as foolish as denying I have cancer when I really do. My challenge is, rather, to stop the cancer from metastasizing and poisoning the whole man.
I doubt I will ever fully eradicate my racism. Unfortunately, I suspect some vestige of it will always be with me. But what I can do, and what I do do, is expose myself to experiences that lessen my racism, those being travel, kind and honest conversation, and breaking bread with “the others” whenever I can. These experiences, like wind and rain, smooth rock and, over time, lay low even the highest mountains.
So when I hear the angry crowd shouting, "He’s a racist,” I want to ask:
“Who among you is not a racist? Stand up then and take a bow...for you are surely a god.”
I moved to Substack!
Hi there. If you've read this far, then you enjoy, or are at least intrigued by, my ideas. If you want to learn more, jump over to my new website on Substack, where I continue to write about travel, the second half of life, and other mad musings.
