Paul Laffoley
(b. 1940, Cambridge, Massachusetts)

THE FIVE PRINCIPLES OF GEEZER ART
2003
India ink , vinyl letters, and photo-collage on acid free board
31 x 31 in.

The art or cultural contribution of the elderly derives from the slang term “Geezer” : a queer , odd, or elderly eccentric person. The word comes from “guiser” [ one in disguise],a word from Scottish Gaelic.

In relation to the “Youth Cult” of 1950’s and 1960’s that we have just passed through, “geezer” means the youth you once were is in “disguise” inside an old body. Often the elderly complain to younger companions of a 20 year old soul trapped in an 80 year old body, etc. The desire for self-reliance and serious interaction with the world and history burns as brightly as ever, while the young may deny this of the old.

Even Satan , feels the sting of the passage of time [his estimated age dates from the time of the Big-Bang]. He cringes when newly created angels overhear him exclaim to himself, “I am as bad as I ever was”.

Today, however, the tide has turned. The population is getting older and remaining healthy. The average person over 65 has an exercise regimen and takes at least 35 nutritive supplements. Households where some members reach the age of 100 is not uncommon. And the wisdom a person gains over a lifetime is being cherished again. The old are no longer being looked upon as a wad of Kleenex to be used for their money and thrown away, or shunned like an alien from another dimension.

Fans of culture heroes are flocking back to those like Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-1882], who offer a true ideology free alternative to the secular commercial world that has now codified a new and rigid class system. Emerson’s concept of the “Oversoul” as the Absolute Reality and the basis of separate existences within time , is of an ideal nature, which is only imperfectly manifested in human beings, nevertheless, is somehow always perfectly realized. This transcendental outlook which eschewed the “standard brand” religions of the East and the West and Skepticism, allowed Emerson to influence people as diverse as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin [1881-1955] and Friedrich Nietzche [1844-1900], who both as a result managed to avoid Theism, Atheism, and Agnosticism.

Emerson was , therefore, a true geezer – an old soul that when he was young was in disguise, a soul that was revealed when his body began to decay.