She looks old.

I’m truly in shock.  I’m not sure how great Debra’s performance is, but watching her on screen is truly astounding. She looks like a woman who’s over fifty, and no one in Hollywood is over forty, they believe you’ve got to be young to count, and they lie about their age as they go for plastic surgery as the population just gets older and older, with baby boomers reaching retirement age.

In other words, who can you get more excited about, Willow Smith or Elton John?

Although Willow says she worked really hard, she has no experience.  And it’s experience that rounds out the personality, delivers three dimensions that people can react to.  Ever have a friend give you advice?  That’s what happens when you get older, you’ve been there, you’ve done that, you’re comfortable in your own skin. Unless, of course, you’re not.

I did this BMI event with Evan Lowenstein last week.  And when the photos came back, I was positively frightened.  Sure, Evan’s a hunk, but he’s also twenty years younger than I am, next to him I looked like a wrinkled prune, I could barely look.

But I can’t stop looking at Debra Winger.  She seems experienced.  Like she’s got stories.  Like she’s had victories and losses.  Those wrinkles in her neck and those lines above her lip and those furrows in her brow…they evidence someone who’s lived.

It’s so hard to buck the trend, so hard to be different from everyone else.  But what’s the point.  Tommy Mottola lies about his age so he can ultimately be irrelevant?  If you keep trying to keep up with the young ‘uns, you’re putting yourself in an emotional cul-de-sac, because only by aging can you gain wisdom, only by owning your true self can you truly enjoy life.

I’m not saying Debra Winger’s gonna start a revolution.  Everything seems to be going the wrong way.  But when confronted with honesty and truth, it’s shocking.  That’s how far we’ve come, we can be captured by someone’s mere countenance.  Watching Ms. Winger I couldn’t stop asking myself if she’d gotten the memo, how strong she had to be to go her own way.

But today even rock stars get plastic surgery.  Ozzy and Gene Simmons have admitted to it.  But you’d be stunned to learn who’s had a nip here and a tuck there.  They think they’re winning, but they’re not.  Bob Dylan’s face looks experienced and he’s singing like an aged man with the wisdom of years on the planet, whereas most other old acts, if they create new material at all, try to have it not only sound like the days of yore, but infuse it with the same drinkin’, druggin’ and womanizin’ perspective that they no longer live but think they must inhabit in order to maintain cred.

We don’t want you to be an icon.  We want you to be a beacon.  And those are two very different identities.  One is two-dimensional, blinding us with its light.  The other is positively three-dimensional, illuminating the way ahead, illustrating life in a way we both know and don’t.  Isn’t that the essence of the best songs?  We both know them, but don’t?

I know people like Debra Winger.

I don’t know anyone like Nicollette Sheridan and the other wicked witches who are afraid of getting old.

If you can’t own yourself, your body and your soul and your age, what makes you think we’re going to be attracted, that we’re going to care?  The road to great art is paved with honesty, and first and foremost you must be honest with yourself.