Column | Spy old men

All kinds of spry old men have stood up to me in recent days. Was it a coincidence? Maybe I wanted to go for a spry old man myself? Who knows.

Anyway, it was impossible to escape. It started during that unparalleled exciting tennis final on Roland Garros between Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz. Occasionally during such a party, a invited coryfee from the past comes into the picture. Similarly the American Stan Smith, with whom I share the year of birth 1946 and whom I saw the Wimbledon final against Ilie Nastase in 1972. A tall, sympathetic player. He still seems to travel the whole world to show his surprised face. There is a tennis shoe, now a sneaker, named after him.

To my great regret at Roland Garros, I could not look completely, because if necessary I had to go to another spry old man in the small comedy in Amsterdam: the singer-songwriter Alex Roeka. He lied about his age for a long time – he took ten years off in publicity – but later became proud of his old age: in the meantime 80 years.

I had never seen him perform live before, did know a part of his work: often fairly painful songs, on the edge of the Larmoyante, sometimes over it, sometimes right in the heart, and not only in mine, because from a marginal artist he grew into a familiarity with full halls and colleagues who have a praise for him. On this evening he mainly sang work on his latest album, Night café, Only accompanied by a guitarist and a drummer. I missed some of his best songs, and I also expected a somewhat more intimate concert, but there was still enough quality left.

Jacques Brel is his great example, from him he inherited an exuberant kind of melancholy. Roeka finds the world shot, as he repeatedly insures us, but that does not prevent him from taking the bottom out that can be full of misery. « I want to live like an animal, » he already sang in his opening song, « life, now and here, life, justice through it, I want to live, what do I live for? »

For a man of 80 he radiated astonishingly a lot of energy: powerful in voice, tireless in contact with his enthusiastic audience. At the end, he promised to sign some albums in the foyer.

But I had to go home because I wanted to read the recent book of an 87-year-old (!) Chadal from Jan Siebelink. In it he mourns about the death of his wife Gerda. A sad, impressive book, less than Roeka on the Larmoyante, because prose can be nuanced better than in a lyrics.

Siebelink describes a struggle with sorrow that does not seem to win. « Time heals, but not at my age. So much reminds of you, in the house, in me, my children and grandchildren – that continues to join. »

And: « Never again, in all eternity, you will say anything to me. You are no longer there. You are dead, timeless, eternal. I can’t comprehend it, you were part of me, I am amputated. We were part of each other, were each other. I didn’t save this. »

I think: by singing and writing, Roeka and Siebelink will make it a little more.

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