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.
The Beautiful Alberta Hunter
In 1978, I was living in New York City and I learned that the famous jazz singer Alberta Hunter had come out of retirement and was going to sing at the Cookery in Greenwich Village. I immediately ordered tickets. I knew this would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Alberta Hunter, who had started her singing career back in the 1920s singing with Louie Armstrong, had stopped singing many years before to become a nurse, but was now retired. And at age eighty-something, the Cookery convinced her to come and sing. What a joy and a privilege to see this beautiful woman. And she was truly beautiful—not for an eighty-year-old woman, but beautiful for any age. And I loved the stories she told and all the songs she sang. But most of all, I remember Alberta Hunter singing the very, very randy song, “My Man Is Such a Handy Man.” The entire song is made up of double entendres such as “he threads my needle. He creams my wheat.” Her performance was brilliant—down to earth, funny, relaxed, wise, and very, very sexy.
Alberta Hunter was sexy—not despite the fact that she was eighty, but because of it. The fact that she was eighty-something added a complexity to the evening. She owned her sexuality, her worldliness. You felt as if she’d had some amazing love in her life and that she had a confidence and a sense of humor about it. And her age added a certain richness to the song. This was a woman who had lived and loved. Who had known fame and left it all behind to live an ordinary life and then was back again.
I will admit, too, that because of her age, I knew that she would not be long in this world and that I was experiencing an event never to be repeated. And indeed, Alberta Hunter died seven years later.
I tell you this story not simply to say that you are always becoming and the story is always unfolding, but as a message to be alive to the present moment and to know that while you may not be a famous jazz singer or a not-quite-famous jazz singer like my friend Margie, nonetheless—whether you know it or not—you are still being observed. You are still an inspiration to the young and the not-so-young. Every day, you have an opportunity to send out the message that aging isn’t such a bad thing and it’s certainly nothing to be afraid of. In fact, it’s something quite delightful.
The Young and the Restless
If we deny our age and fight it, we are silently telling our daughters and younger people that aging is horrible. A nightmare ! We are giving out the message that they should not grow old at any cost. And so, even twenty-five-year-olds begin to fear aging and want to rush to the plastic surgeon. This is a losing battle. Why not show the younger generation that becoming une femme d’un certain âge has many benefits and that aging can be wonderful and something to actually look forward to?
Borrow a page from the French. Frenchwomen do not take anything for granted. They’ve been through hell and back through centuries of invasions and wars and economic tumult. They have lost many of their young men to wars and so as Frenchwomen, they have learned