She was sexy and intriguing—not so much because of her good looks, but because of her savoir faire, her confidence and self-assurance.
That’s really the key. Once you get to a certain point in your life, a lot of the old insecurities fade away. And if you had children along the way, they are now grown. A whole new life opens before you and new possibilities present themselves to you. Some dreams that you deferred now resurface. There’s actually a term for this in astrology (I learned this from the wonderful astrologist Susan Miller). It’s called your “Saturn return,” which means that the lessons and challenges and decisions you made during your late twenties revisit you in your forties up to about age fifty-nine. At this stage, you have another opportunity to reconsider the past and change the course of your life. If there are leftover dreams from those early years, you can now embrace them again and bring them to fruition. It’s actually a very magical and powerful time in any person’s life. So, rather than thinking of this phase as a “midlife crisis,” consider that this is actually another chance to grab the brass ring. True, you may not be as agile or quick as you were in your twenties, but now you have all that wisdom and power and experience. Oh, and by now you know how to admit you don’t know how to do something and you’re not too proud to ask for help. And most importantly, you’ve learned not to pay attention to the naysayers and you’ve let go of the debilitating desire for perfection.
This was the case for my good friend Marjorie, a sound artist and university professor. She’s been living in the north of France for the last twenty years. She was born in Michigan, moved to New York City after attending the University of Michigan, and spent nearly twenty years in New York, first as an actress, then a writer, and she wrote and produced a Peabody Award-winning radio documentary drama, establishing a lifetime career in public radio. She is one talented and accomplished femme d’un certain âge, but with all that said, she’s now taken up singing American jazz classics with an ensemble.
She tells me that the French love American jazz and are very accepting of less than completely polished voices. In fact, Marjorie tells me that they actually prefer personality over perfection. It’s the passion and authenticity that stirs them!
Marjorie recently told me this:
When I was young I desperately wanted to be an actress and I also loved to sing and dance. I was totally obsessed with this idea from the age of twelve, when my mother sent me to drama class to give me confidence, to the age of around twenty-seven, when I finally gave it all up and got a real job.
The little girl that sang all the words to “I’m the Greatest Star” over and over again in her bedroom suffered quite a number of indignities in early adulthood. Two years of rejection on the stand-up comedy circuit, as well as a complete lack of encouragement during the short period that I sang alone with a piano player in a small showcase bar where I also worked as a waitress.
Childhood piano lessons came to nothing. I bought a guitar in my twenties and never even learned to tune it properly. Still, I listened to jazz by the hour and learned hundreds of songs in my head. As an apprentice in summer stock, I couldn’t even clap in rhythm. However, in the summer of 1972, there was a big flood in the town, and they sent all the professional actors home and the apprentices had to play all the leads, so I got onstage. But still, the word on me was that I couldn’t really carry a tune.
In a way I kind of outgrew my performing complex and turned my ambitions in other directions. I turned to radio producing and eventually radio wasn’t really artistically challenging enough, so I became more and more compositional in my work. But there was no real place for sound composers who weren’t considered bona fide musicians first and foremost.
I cut everything in my life and moved to France, vaguely chasing a quiet place to become an artist—that certainly did not happen overnight. Another eighteen years went by.
I never stopped singing in my head. By chance, I was teaching in an engineering school with quite a number of conservatory musicians doing double majors—and somehow I got up the courage to perform in their concert at school. I was very apologetic and deprecating about it, but I think because they liked their crazy American teacher I was a hit.
The school celebrated its fiftieth anniversary and I was asked to help produce a show. We had a big theater with a professional sound system, a student who was a piano prodigy as the music director, and a full band. The show was packed to the rafters. At the end of the show, the band had wanted to play “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love” à la the Blues Brothers, so I came out dressed like John Belushi—sunglasses, pork pie hat—and did the song, monologue and all. My team of students came out, all dressed as the Blues Brothers and backed me up in a line dance.
Right before we went on, the one female engineer in the team whispered, “Are you nervous?” I said, “Not really.” She said, “You’re not? Why?” “I dunno. There just doesn’t seem to be any point to being nervous. I’m gonna go out there and do it, that’s all.”
After the song, the place exploded into a standing ovation, and it was only later that I realized that this packed audience of about three hundred people were in fact mostly the guys that I had been entertaining and encouraging in English class for the last ten years and their spouses and families. The next day, a Saturday morning, I just sat and sobbed for about two hours, totally overwhelmed by this love and adoration.
So that led to singing in more concerts, performing with a group in a local restaurant, taking a three-day jazz master class that was horribly snobby and intimidating—and doing two art performances this month in which I sang. The last concert I did with the students was in February—I scatted to “Take Five,” something I would never have been able to do even a year ago. That concert was the last time I rehearsed and performed without putting myself down and apologizing to the musicians.
They say that proper singing is about your breathing and how you stand, et cetera—that is all true—but I am sure that I was always capable of singing and performing—and that I had a good, ear, too—it was always there. I was just too scared. Even when I was throwing myself at an audience and trying my very best I was still too scared.
I’ll be fifty-nine on my next birthday. I don’t know what took me so long. I don’t bother with regrets. It just took as long as it took.
Brain Power
In her latest book, The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain, scientist Barbara Strauch explains how our brains actually get better in middle age. While some quick reflexes might diminish, our reasoning gets better, we’re able to make better decisions, and our ability to quickly and accurately size up situations improves. Years ago, we heard that we lose 30 percent of our brain cells as we age and now we find that this is simply not true. Yes, just as we always suspected, we get better with age. But here’s the catch—if you don’t use it, you lose it, so she recommends challenging our minds. I’m happy to report that learning a foreign language is on her list of ways to build brain power, as well as getting into a conversation with someone who disagrees with your ideas. All this tones the brain. And it’s very French! When we asked Frenchwomen and men how they stayed so vibrant and happy, they often cited how they took workshops and classes. My French friend Tania is already a terrific cook, but recently she took a class in making the French macaron, which apparently is a very delicate operation and not easy to master. She speaks perfect English and sometimes it’s a struggle to get her to speak French, because she wants to practice her English! Recently, for her vacation, rather than just going to the beach or over the channel to London, she went to Egypt. You see the pattern here—she is always challenging herself. The French believe in always learning something new.
So, the next time you read about classes and workshops at your local community college or night school, sign up for something that challenges you. Your brain will thank you.
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