Once a week on Friday, Uncle Bardie celebrates the creativity in others by shining a Spotlight on a movie, a song or a creator. This week’s Spotlight Song is Willie Nelson singing “This Face of Mine”.
We live in a culture that praises youth and beauty and puts them on display for all the world to love. Some fight age, even though we all age. For some reason, they want to mask the beauty that experience brings to the face. The wrinkles that were earned from hard worn experience.
Two of my heroes are Willie Nelson and Tony Bennett. They have been such a constant through the years. They get up, walk out on the stage and give their audiences everything they’ve got. And what faces. Then there’s the face of Georgia O’Keefe. What an amazing face she had. Especially as she put on years. It was like the landscape of the New Mexico she came to love. These are faces that have lived lives. Faces that have taken on the good and the bad and come out on the other side.
I look into the mirror every morning not to admire the face staring back at me. But to say, “Hello, Old Friend. We’ve gone through a lot together. I don’t know another face that would have stuck it out with me for so long. Thanks for sticking with me.” One thing’s for sure. There’s no improving on it. It’s the feller God gave me. So I am sticking with it.
Someone once said, “Beauty only goes skin deep.” But I would tell that fellow that there is beauty, and then there is beauty. There is a beauty in the desert and there is a beauty in the wild places and there is a beauty in a face that has stuck with me for all these years. Thanks, Face.
Uncle Bardie's Stories & Such 