Having no contemporaries left means you cannot say, 'Well, so-and-so will like this,' which you do when you're younger. You realize there is no so-and-so anymore. You are your own so-and-so. There is a bleak side to it.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Fame and success and titles stay with you, but they wear out eventually. In the end, all that you are left with is your character.
The young have aspirations that never come to pass, the old have reminiscences of what never happened.
It's more important what you leave to people on this planet. I want my legacy to exist now, currently, not after I'm gone.
We're all outsiders in a way. We're all alone and can become very lonely.
My successor may need to be more modern than I am. It's a question of generations.
No matter where you are in your life, whatever set of people you're with, it all still breaks down like high school does. You have your social cliques, you have the people you get along with, the people you don't and the people you're ambivalent about. All of the dynamics are still here.
I just didn't like the idea of doing reunions, period. I could only see it as I'd just be going over the same old ground. I'm only years older and fatter and I'll just do an older, fatter version of me.
This is what I would say to my pupil: 'You have become only your fame and left behind most of who you were. How are you going to deal with that? Will you lose that person forever? Have you become someone else without really knowing it? Do you always have to stay in character for people to like you? Do you know that you are in character?'.
Life has become the ideology of its own absence.
Why was I born with such contemporaries?