A Kind of Moving On

 I stand tall and take a deep breath. The lilting soundtrack accompaniment begins to play, but I am not yet centered and miss the first beat. 

Lloyd says: “Start again… but this time - with more support.” I hold my hands under my diaphragm as he has taught me, expelling the air and singing with feeling: “There’s been a change in me … a kind of moving on…” It’s a lovely melody from Beauty and the Beast and the beautiful words seem to have been written just for me.

Way on the other side of the room, Svengali waves his arms, directs me to hold a note … open my lips … lift my soft palate …let the words flow. He reminds me to direct the sound to the front of my mouth, and while I’m doing all this – to breathe. I want to giggle at the scene we create – me an overweight diva with an audience of one elderly, but enthusiastic man – singing out my heart and soul on a summer afternoon in an apartment in Kfar Saba. What the heck am I doing here?

It started when I turned 60 and I was panicked by a sense of time passing and the need to take charge of actualizing my remaining good years as best as possible. How many would I have left? What did I want to do with them? What would make me happy?

Though I liked my job, it wasn’t enough. I visualized myself dying and my boss reading her eulogy, saying something complimentary about my contribution to the work of the organization. It painted a reassuring picture, nice, but was it enough? With a finite number of good years in front of me and a sense of my growing fragility, I asked myself want I wanted to do. Big question - What do I want?

I want to sing. I’ve always wanted to sing but stopped when my daughter’s mouth grew big enough to ask me to shut mine because I was giving her a headache. I’d have loved to have singing lessons but never thought I was good enough. Never thought I deserved to be trained to sing! Now I didn’t care, I would learn to sing. Whatever my voice, I could learn to sing better. Other people take up bridge. I would take up singing.

I put an advert on a neighborhood mailing list, and it didn’t take long before a friendly note came from Lloyd, inviting me to make contact. Hardly breathing, I made the call and found myself a few days later, hugging the loo at a shop across the road from his apartment, with a nervous stomach before my lesson.

I wish I had recorded the first time I opened my mouth for Lloyd. The temerity of my voice … the lack of confidence … the stomach squelches which broadcast to all that I was not well inside. Lloyd said we would start with ‘breshit’ – meaning the basics, but I was so nervous and so literal – I thought he meant we’d start with something Hebrew from the Creation story in the Old Testament. When we began to sing “Caro Mio Ben”, I was a little confused – it sounded like an Italian love song. I sang the first note in my growing older voice. Then Lloyd demonstrated how it was to be done and I was entranced by the powerful sound he made which caused the whole building vibrate. I would have continued to come, week after week, simply for the pleasure of hearing him sing.

For the first six months I was filled with anxiety. I could only cope with lessons on afternoons when I didn’t work … so that I could practice beforehand and be free of outside tension.

I bought a recorder and taped myself singing; bad mistake. I sounded like my worst nightmare. I was embarrassed to practice at home lest my neighbors would hear – so I switched on the air-conditioning and closed the windows. Mostly I sang with my head in my clothes cupboard. I also sang on my daily walk through the park when no one was around. Nobody ever practiced harder than I did. What made me persevere through all this agony? I don’t know, but the image I had of my audacious self in my weekly singing lessons kept a mischievous smile on my face. I kept going back for more.

Learning new skills is never easy, but long ago I discovered that there is a learning curve, and if one perseveres, one can count on finding light at the end of the tunnel. When I started singing lessons, I was in a state of blissful ignorance. Then, I grew increasingly aware of my lack of ability and this made me confused and despondent. At times it seemed impossible to coordinate the many elements that Lloyd was asking me to pull together – talk about multi-tasking! I was aware that I was reaching the age when singers begin to retire and wondered whether I’d left it too late. With the passing months, I became ever more self-conscious, demoralized by the awful sound I seemed to produce no matter how much I practiced.

I read books – “Singing for Dummies” - must have been written for people like me - and I taught myself elementary music theory. Lloyd kept counting out the beats to the bar and I kept protesting that I never could do math. The harder I tried, the more forced my voice sounded. My voice couldn’t make up its mind what it was an alt or a mezzo… a deep contralto or a breathless sound full of light and air. One day I was Ethel Merman the next Ella Fitzgerald and I wondered why I didn’t just opt for bridge like everyone else!

Then one day, Lloyd gave me a book of Broadway hits. “Maybe we'll leave the Italian for a while,” he suggested. “Let’s see how this suits you.”

It suited me all right. Suddenly, I had an outlet – songs I could enjoy with no pretensions of becoming a classical singer. The book was a cornucopia of fun, filled with the old songs I heard in my youth, the wonderful tunes that stuck in one’s head, bequeathed to us by legendary songwriters, like Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Steven Sondheim, and lately by Andrew Lloyd Webber. It was a mine of melodies I could sing and enjoy and which suited my voice. Today I have a repertoire of more songs than I can sing through a happy afternoon.

You never know which will be the therapeutic moment that heals you. It could be your hour with a therapist. It could be a passing encounter with a kind someone who makes you feel truly special. For me, it has been a discovery that I can sing and the musical interludes I have spent with Lloyd. Recently he reminded me of my ambition to join a choir and encouraged me to take on my next challenge...

I love the song I am singing … there has indeed been a change in me… a kind of moving on … The story, Beauty and the Beast, is an allegory about transformation and change – of putting away old notions and identities that no longer fit. By the time we reach 60 we’ve been bruised and shaken up by life… we’ve experienced disappointment…illness…loss...For me, happiness comes from meeting life head-on, trying to understand my dreams and choosing to do the things that will bring me joy. It is a process of continually recreating myself; of being the creative hand that writes the story of my life.

Standing in front of Lloyd, I sing…
“For in my dark despair
I slowly understood
My perfect world out there
Had disappeared for good
But in its place I feel
A truer life begin
And it's so good and real
It must come from within
And I-- I never thought I'd leave behind
My childhood dreams but I don't mind
I'm where and who I want to be
No change of heart
A change in me.”