Autumn,
this year, seems to be coming late to the Northeast. Leaves are still green, the air is warm, and
although the quality of the light is changing, the cloudless blue skies are
belying the calendar. Or trying to.
On the Liz
path, there is, once again, a certain surreal quality to yet another fall in
yet another “eddy.” It’s beautiful in
Northern New York, and in so many ways, I’m in a far more comfortable stopping
point than the last few Septembers.
Looking back, I realize that for the last five years, early fall has tended
to find me “gearing up” for a new foray into English church music, from a home
and/or work situation that was, like an eddy by the side of a rapidly flowing
river, kind of improbable, unsettled and relatively still.
Each of these eddies had seemed like dead ends in and of themselves, circling
and spiraling around seemingly without purpose, and yet each made possible –
because of their temporary nature – a winter musical experience that I would
have been unlikely to be able to “go for” if I had been more settled or tied
down. Most people would understandably
be alarmed by undertaking this kind of moment-to-moment journey in their 50’s,
but I was more alarmed by the notion of not
doing it. I knew that if I were to have any significant experiences in this
field, it had to happen now. And I guess
I grasped that, while there might be some rhyme or reason to how it all turned
out, there also might not be, and I just had to go for it. I had not followed the normal path that men
had done for generations, so all bets were off anyway!
The
dream? A singing position as a “lay
clerk” in an English cathedral or an American equivalent; and/or to make a name
for myself in the more scholarly branch of the field with my Herbert Howells
articles; and/or possibly to get into a PhD program in England based on my
Howells studies. If these three intersecting
worlds might be said to be banquet tables, my efforts these last few years have
yielded dramatic yet not lasting results, kind of as if – from behind a
barrier -- I snatched one or two extraordinary morsels of food, the best food I’ve
ever eaten, but have not been able to sit down to the main meal. I sang for nine months in the mixed men and
women’s choir at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York
(approximately one choral evensong a week – a thrill!), I sang a “dream”
evensong service in England, was one of the first women ever to audition for an
English cathedral choir, saw and heard girls and women singing in English
university and cathedral choirs, got to know some prominent English church
musicians, and published articles that I hoped would “wow” the music field, but
essentially seem to have dropped like quiet pebbles into a still pond. If these sound like modest accomplishments,
they really aren’t. If you had asked me
in 2010 if any of this would have been possible, I would have said, no way on
earth! And when I was younger and the
field was entirely male, even envisioning such experiences would have been considered
delusional. So this time period has been
magical and fast flowing, punctuated by quiet eddies by the side of the stream
where the water seemed to flow backwards for a time.
This year’s
eddy, however, has a decidedly different quality to it. Five years ago I was 54, and now I am
59. The difference is really
monumental. It has to do with both
energy level and goals. There’s not much
I have to tell any of you over 55 about energy!
Goal-wise, I realize that there is nothing further that I need to prove
to myself. I know that I have the
passion, the talent and the intellectual capacity to have been successful in some
branch of this field had it been open to me 40 years ago, or if I had had a different level of confidence. If I had doubts about that earlier in my
life, now I don’t. And so today, I don’t
feel the need to “pursue” these opportunities any more, or to push the
river. It’s OK. Younger women and men will take the lead now.
There may be opportunities in the future for summer singing at English
cathedrals, but my bigger goal right now, as I head into my sixties, is
becoming settled and content. The
difference is, I honor my passion for English church music and everything
English (literature, art, music, history, landscape, movies, architecture,
humor…) and don’t intend this time to run away, as I did in my late 20’s. That
is the stream of my life. And as I find myself
in this fall’s eddy by the side of the stream, my job is to find that little surge of life that will take me
downstream – and release the urge to fight or control it!
