I have been wondering recently if I haven't always been a bit of an old fogey. One the one hand I have happily embraced ideas that were at the edge of cultural thinking - after all, I was a performing arts teacher given to many avant-garde adventures. On the other hand, I have an old person's perspective on much that is everything else.

I remember as a young man arriving in England, only to be told by my somewhat alarmed relatives that I was an 'old head on young shoulders.' I worried too much about the world, they said. Being interested in international politics, fretting over the arms race - these were things best left to the middle-aged.

There is often a kind of tension within me between opposing elements - the sacred and the profane, progressive and conservative and so forth, that leaves me a little breathless. I don't always know where to plant my feet, or what positions I should stake out. Why do I have a copy of The Economist in one hand, and The Guardian Weekly in the other?

A few days ago on the way to Sydney a couple in front of me on the train were chatting. As the skyline of the CBD came in to view, the man said to his partner, 

"Just look at that view."

He meant it as a complement, but I thought, 'Yes, look and weep.'

Yesterday I was reading the Newcastle Herald live over the air when I came upon a story about a repurposed local government building that was considered a masterpiece in the 'Brutalist' style. As brutalism goes, and generally it is plain awful, it wasn't a bad looking building, though I would not have stopped to take a picture. And yet I love a lot of modern art.

You see, there is tension, born out of inconsistency, that I cannot get rid of.