43

I used to write a little birthday post every year. I would list all the interesting things about the number/age I was turning and reflect. I glance over them now and feel charmed by how innocent they are. They were before the years felt "piled up." 

- I distinctly recall turning 24 and having the realization that childhood was truly over and I had "missed it."

- I remember waking up in San Francisco on the morning of my 30th birthday just after West Side Story had closed (the cast sang to me at midnight!) and feeling like life was truly all ahead of me... not fully realizing that less than two years later I would have a diagnosis and so much fear and pain. 

- I remember 36—the first birthday with Alec in my life—and not knowing where to put all of my peace and joy and happiness. 

- And 40. Days before I turned 40 I quit a high profile job and thought my career might be over, but the relief I felt at walking away from something so toxic was a level of certainty I couldn't ignore, and realized I had fought too hard to be alive to live feeling that horrendous about my work...

 

So. Hello 43. 

 

For decades my life has been organized around earning: health, approval, love, safety, another day. This year is the first in which I seem to have experienced what psychologists sometimes call "earned security"—not perfection, but a nervous system that is slowly learning, "Wait wait wait what: I don't have to manufacture every ounce of love that comes toward me?"

___
 

Last week, Chicago was flirting with one hundred degrees. The sort of heat that makes the buildings shimmer and convinces everyone they have suddenly become experts on hydration. 

 

Alec looked at me and said, "Beach?"
For me that answer is always "Obviously."

 

If you've never been to a Chicago beach in the summer, it feels vaguely illegal. You're standing in one of the largest cities in America, surrounded by skyscrapers, and somehow there's an inland sea stretching toward the horizon with no opposite shore in sight. Lake Michigan has always refused to behave like a lake. It insists on being mistaken for an ocean.
It is also? My water.
I grew up diving into it from the Michigan side, and every time I return, my body recognizes it before my brain does.
Without ceremony, I walked straight into the bone-shivering water with abandon.

 

Or perhaps...with ceremony? Because as the cold overtook me, something unexpected happened. My entire body began to tingle with the intensity of an arm waking after it's fallen asleep. Every nerve ending seemed to announce itself at once. As though someone had quietly switched my awareness back on.

 

I couldn't help thinking about the mikveh—the ritual bath that marks transition, renewal, emergence into a different chapter of life. I've always loved that Judaism understands water as more than water. Sometimes immersion is less about washing something away, than becoming someone new.

 
Standing waist-deep in Lake Michigan, I found myself waking up.
To health.
To gratitude.
To the astonishing, ordinary miracle of having a body that can carry me into freezing cold lake water without fear.

And excuse me please but let's pause here to appreciate one of the quieter miracles in this story:
I got into a bathing suit, mmkay? 
I walked into the water without negotiating with my reflection.
For decades, body dysmorphia/ disrodered eating/ general self-loathing literally stole moments like these from me. Even when I longed to swim in my favorite thing on earth: The Water, some cruel internal accountant insisted I hadn't yet earned the right. My body was something to apologize for before it could become a vessel to enjoy human experience.

This time, I didn't bargain.
I just got in.

The greatest victories increasingly resemble freedoms.
Not achievements.
Freedoms.
 

A few days later, I celebrated my birthday.
Forty-freaking-three.

And I can say, without hesitation, that it was the most beautiful birthday of my adult life.
Not because of presents.
Not because of messages of celebratory messages.
Not because that evening I had the extraordinary privilege of sitting onstage as Désirée Armfeldt and singing "Send in the Clowns"—(though, TBH: beginning a new year of life with one of Stephen Sondheim's most searing songs felt like a piece of theatrical symmetry too intense to have been planned?)

It was beautiful because, for perhaps the first time in my life, I allowed myself to receive it.

Receiving turns out to be much harder than giving. I used to pride myself on giving more than I received— if ever allowing myself to receive at all! As if that were some sort of superior virtue. Ah, youth. How wrong I was. 
But understandable, of course. Giving feels active. Noble. Productive. Receiving requires something far more frightening.
It requires believing that you don't owe anyone an explanation for why you're worthy of being loved.
And after all, for most of my life, I didn't believe that. My grandfather taught me—without ever saying the words outright—that love was a wage.  Approval was conditional. Safety was earned and re-earned— every day. Even accomplishment wasn't enough, because yesterday's accomplishment expired overnight. Whatever affection had been earned on Tuesday needed to be re-earned on Wednesday. Then Thursday. Then Friday. The treadmill never stopped.

I internalized the lesson so completely that I confused striving with living.

If I just worked harder…
If I were just more successful…
More talented.
More useful.
More exceptional.

Then perhaps I could finally exhale.

Of course, the finish line kept moving.
 

Illness complicated all of this in ways I'm only now beginning to understand.
When survival itself becomes your full-time occupation, you learn to live in a perpetual state of bracing. You become extraordinarily good at enduring.
But enduring and living are not the same thing.

This year, something shifted.
Perhaps it was writing Brigadoon.
Perhaps it was playing Désirée, who seemed determined to interrogate every illusion I still carried about worthiness.
Perhaps it was the privilege of being surrounded by extraordinary collaborators and friends who loved me without asking me to audition for the role.
Perhaps it was simply enough years between myself and the girl who learned to hustle for approval.
Whatever the reason, I noticed something extraordinary on my birthday.
When people loved me...
I let them.
I didn't rush to deflect the compliment.
I didn't immediately calculate how to repay every kindness.
I didn't secretly wonder whether I'd disappointed them somehow.
I simply received it. 

With the enormous gratitude a true gift deserves.

That's the lesson: truly receiving love is its own act of generosity.

If love is a gift, who am I to deflect it so callously? To decide whether or not it is deserved? Someone has thought of me, gone out, selected it, purchased it with hard earned wages and wrapped it up for your delight. 

Receive all of that. Without fuss or deflection. 

It is gracious to do so.  

People want to celebrate one another.
They want to uplift.
They want to cook dinner, write cards, send messages, hug you far longer than etiquette requires. They aren't keeping score. 

Healthy love isn't transactional. 

It isn't waiting for reimbursement.
It longs to be accepted.

I went to sleep that night feeling something I don't remember ever feeling before.

Full.
As though every kind word, every embrace, every laugh, every song, every impossible twist of fortune this extraordinary year had offered had finally been allowed to land.
 

For the first time, I wasn't carrying the bucket beneath a waterfall, frantically trying to prove I deserved the water.
I simply stood in it.
 

The beautiful thing about fullness, I've discovered this year, is that it doesn't end with you.
It overflows.

And flows ever-outward.  
The more completely we allow ourselves to receive love, the more freely we can offer it away again tomorrow.
 

The birthday gift of 43 is learning that there comes a moment in every life when we can finally stop asking, 

"Have I earned this yet?"

 

And simply answer, with gratitude:

 

"Isn't it rich?"

receiving: with my whole, damn grateful heart

42

PRIME TIME. 

 

Here’s to one great trip around the sun, and raising a glass to what  feels like juuuust might be the best year yet. 

 

Something deep, ancient and crucial has shifted in me this last year— it feels like the greatest act of “becoming” and of true maturity I’ve ever experienced. It was? Uncomfortable! But it was also—as all expansions are—worthwhile. I’m grateful for all the “teachers”that appeared around me. 

 

If we accept the notion that life itself is a gift, than that means it is ALL a gift, not just the wins and joys. But also all the adversities, losses, and the Unimaginable. And thus, if we are indeed grateful for the gift of life, than we have to be grateful for all of it. 

 

And I am. 

All the pains. 

The grief. 

The losses. 

The twists and turns. 

The mistakes. 

The agonizing realizations. 

I am grateful. 

It’s all life. 

 

Reflecting upon things today, I now realize that while I was quite “productive,” I truly lost almost all of my 30s to illness at an age when I might have made greater inroads on my original “little Al” dreams. I had to learn to be grateful just to …still be here at all. Thank everything, I am. 

 

Because in the quieter moments I now realize the experiences shaped me to become someone who valued and wanted different things. By surrendering (not collapsing! Surrender and “giving up” are not the same thing!) to the winds of life and the workings of the divine, I allowed life to work upon me and show me things, skills, desires, capacities, that I never knew were possible. 

 

I feel like this year I am properly beginning my “Second Act.” And I say? Bring it on. 

 

So. Here’s to PRIME TIME. 

 

 

33

33 is:

• A normal human spine has 33 vertebrae when the bones that form the coccyx are counted individual
• The atomic number of arsenic
• In reference to gramophone records, 33 refers to a type of record by its revolution speed of 33⅓ revolutions per minute. 33s are also known as long playing records, or LPs.
• The divine name Elohim appears 33 times in the story of creation in the opening chapters of Genesis.
• The French telephone numbering plan used for France. 
• The number 33 was discovered to lead to the essential meaning of life (the Bible) in Dan Brown's 2009 novel The Lost Symbol. 
• A significant number in modern numerology, one of the Master Numbers along with 11 and 22.
• A song by The Smashing Pumpkins on their album, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.   

• 33 is, according to the Newton scale, the temperature at which water boils. The 33 Strategies of War is a book by Robert Greene
• The number of deities in the Vedic Religion is 33.

• The title of the first episode of the 2004 Battlestar Galactica television series in which the Cylons came every 33 minutes
• In motorsport, 33 is, on most occasions, the traditional number of racers in the Indianapolis 500.
• The number printed on all Rolling Rock beer labels!
  
• The 33 is a 2015 English-language Chilean biographical disaster-survival drama film based on the real events of the 2010 mining disaster, in which a group of thirty-three miners were trapped inside the San José Mine in Chile for more than two months. 
  The highest degree in the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry.
• According to Al-Ghazali the dwellers of Heaven will exist eternally in a state of being age 33. (Whoa.)
• In French, Italian, Romanian, Spanish and Portuguese, the word which a patient is usually asked to say when a doctor is listening to his or her lungs with a stethoscope (Trente-Trois, Trentatré, Treizeci și trei, Treinta y Tres and Trinta e Três)!
•  33 is not only a numerical representation of “the Star of David,” but also the numerical equivalent of AMEN: 1+13+5+14=33.
• And last but not least, Jesus's age when he was crucified. 

*

It has been a journey, readers, and I have reached the place longed for when I began (though, who could have dreamed it to resemble anything like this?) 

I have come to edge of all that I know and all I believe and all I could endure and all I could wonder about, and I have-- again and again-- found new firmament beneath my feet so that I could take one more step. 

Have you been there too? 

This is how I believe we all continue: stepping into the unknown and untested, stepping off the cliff to find there IS something there. That the ground will materialize under our feet as soon as we are ready to step on it--and not one moment before. If this is not the usual way to walk around the block, by now I ought to have become accustomed to it: to have faith in the PROCESS.

- I started off 32 learning I would be returning to Broadway as Tzeitel; began rehearsals for, opened and recorded, my beloved Fiddler on the Roof:

- Did a solo show in London and got to celebrate, bury some hatchets, and truly visit with countless lifelong friends. 

- Returned to San Francisco Symphony to sing in their opening gala, and really conquered some of my huge singing myths. 

- Was diagnosed with a life-changing chronic illness, and truly faced being...um, not-alive at 32, not once but twice. (I will reflect more upon, and share those thoughts, when I am ready to...) Fear not: I am finally, in every sense, well. 

- Became a "Paleo" eater (and have never looked back!)

- I cut off ALL. MY. HAIR.

@theemmaexperience

-  Made some very important new adult friends and business relationships. 

The "Pineapples"

- I MET MY ONLY IDOL ANGELA LANSBURY...

   

 

- Did a solo show at Birdland
 
- Finally recorded Arlington for Broadway Records

- Cleared out the 'clutter," and replaced that clutter with better, more appropriate things (from people, business partnerships, and ideas, to actual physical stuff)

- Had the most wonderful year yet at Pace with my beloved babies.

- Got an actual factual ...two-book deal... and will be able to have the ultimate privilege of sharing my life and work with the world, and have a personal dream come true.


In short, significant highs, and some of the most harrowing lows of my life thus far.

*

We can underline, circle, thought-map, highlight and do ritualistic chanting circles 'til our voices are hoarse about our hopes, dreams and expectations; but I have learned (at least thus far) that the actual form and function of our lives will always be different than our initial imaginings. Life will come barreling toward us with its own very personal demands for what we need to do and above all, learn. 

My lessons this year have been about fortitude: 

When things happen that look disastrous, empowerment allows us to see them as a stage of life that's over, and to look for the next challenge that will advance us toward a dream. Fighting against What Is in a fruitless exercise that drains us. The moment we accept what is, we are empowered to find a way to move forward—like stepping into the unknown, the firmament we need always seems to appear the second we take that faithful step.  You take the leap, and almost as a kind of spiritual reward, the net appears. It appears despite having all the proof. 

The journey to peace/contentment/greatness is arduous, and the tangible and intangible costs we may have to pay are high. Remember that nothing of real value was ever achieved without costs. We must have a strong heart, an open mind, and we must move with tenacity and act without retreating. After all, Vision shall always only be a vision until we take that step of fortitude to make it a reality.

Every time I go through this process I feel vulnerable, and what I assume to be my weaknesses, turn out to be my strengths. Although I continue to learn this lesson over and over again (who doesn't have that experience?), I realized anew that no pain that we suffer, no trial or test that we experience should ever be wasted. Adversity paves the way for our Education— to the expansion of such vital human qualities as patience, faith, humility, and the capacity to endure.

The trick is to endure it patiently. 
          . . . Easier said than done. 

It is still possible (and allowed) to dream with a broken body and a broken heart.  
It is possible for those dreams to manifest into greatest reality. 
One must simply, keep going.
 
Life is a great unending opportunity to keep re-framing disaster and discouragement into faith. 
There is pain 
     but there is also, always, joy. 

Thirty-Two

Thirty-two is...

• the atomic number of germanium
• the number of teams in the National Football League.
• the number of completed, numbered piano sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven
• the freezing point of water at sea level in degrees Fahrenheit
• the code for international direct dial phone calls to Belgium
  the number of teeth of a full set of teeth in an adult human, including wisdom teeth

And...

• the total number of black squares, white squares, and the total number of pieces (black and white) at the beginning of the game of Chess.
• the number of pages in the average comic book (not including the cover)
• the Saros number of the lunar eclipse series (which began on June 11, 1691 BC and ended on August 9, 375 BC). The duration contained 74 lunar eclipses.
• the ball used in association football is typically made with 32 panels of leather or synthetic material.

Also...

• The Hindu scripture Mudgala Purana also describes Ganesha as taking 32 forms.
• In the Kabbalah, there are 32 Kabbalistic Paths of Wisdom.
• 32 = 11 + 22 + 33 
• One billion seconds is about 32 years...

*

So.
Being "one billion seconds" old,
having acquired one billion seconds of wisdom, learning,
and had one billions seconds of human experience, here I am.

I won't lie to you, reader. Thirty-one was a heckuva year. One filled to the brim with gratitude. One utterly overflowing with some of the most incredible professional, personal and artistic highs.
Highlights:

Kiss Me, Kate at Royal Albert Hall

Being nominated for, and singing at, The Grammy Awards with my beloved Cheyenne.

'I Am Harvey Milk' at Disney Hall with "sister" Andrew Lippa

falling madly, passionately in love with my highest calling: teaching. 

making my professional debut as a produced playwright.

playing my dream role, Eliza Doolittle

But, thirty-one also presented some of the most concerning lows in my adult life thus far. And while nothing can compare to the roaring tangle of grief, or the crack of life-altering heartbreak, this year I faced a new stratum of personal extremity: my own health was tested. Oof.

Me. And a pile of sexy sexy medicine.

When your own existence is challenged, you are presented with real some very real questions:

• What am I truly doing with this life I have been given?
• Am I living it, or merely existing?

and, to be frank, the ultimate question:

• ...Do I truly want to be here...?

This is not melodrama, I present these questions with the stark austerity with which they came to me. And while I know that appearances may have presented a glittering year of such exhilarating honors  to the outside world, within, things were in a quiet, invisible crisis.

Luckily, I discovered a hidden well—shadowed, tucked away so deeply in the folds on consciousness I had not yet heard its echo. That well contained a life-force—a serum so potent, it transformed every fibril within me.

I did want to be here.
Very much.

My favorite Psalm (spooookily, Psalm 32) says:

When I kept silent,
    my bones wasted away
       through my groaning all day long...

What I take from this is that "silence" of all kind, is spiritually expensive. I can no longer silence the full spectrum of who I am, or I will, in every day, cease to truly exist. So that meant re-framing my idea of (all-encompassing) health beginning at the cellular level, and that, dear readers, I have endeavored to do with the help of great (super strict!) doctors, teachers, healers, the care of loving friends, and especially the super-human 'Mama Silbs.' I am better than ever.

And, dear reader, though I cannot tell you yet, I have recently received a birthday gift beyond my wildest dreams. I will be able to celebrate good ol' thirty-two in a manner beyond imagining.

So. Here is what I learned long the way:

Trust your struggle.

It is all merely a part of the Great story.

Thirty-One

Thirty-one is...

• a popular a card game
• the atomic number of Gallium
• the third Mersenne prime ( 2⁵ - 1 )
• and a centered triangular number, a centered pentagonal number and centered decagonal number

and,

• the code for international direct-dial phone calls to the Netherlands. 

Also...

• In Buddhism, there are believed to be 31 planes of existence
• There are 31 days in the months of January, March, May, July, August, October and December.
• In ice hockey 'goalies' often wear the number 31. 
• Messier object M31, is a magnitude 4.5 galaxy in the constellation Andromeda. It is also known as the Andromeda Galaxy, and is readily visible to the naked eye in a modestly dark sky.
  In music, 31-tone equal temperament is a historically significant tuning system (31 equal temperament)
  
• 31 is a London bus route running through Camden Town

And of course,

• The number of Baskin-Robbins ice cream flavo(u)rs! 

*

Having spent my 30th in San Francisco onstage at Davies Symphony Hall singing the role of a lifetime, then quickly following it up with a weekend with my amazing family, last year sure does seem hard to out-do...

Oh: but out-do-it I shall.
Why, do you ask?
Because this thirty-one-derful year I am spending my birthday returning to London (a place I have not spent it in five years since birthday number 26). I can't officially tell you why I am here yet (sigh), but rest assured it is for a fabulous, exciting, bucket-list-esque singing-related reason that thrills me to my core.

But beyond a working identity, London is about the origins of my adulthood, and above all, about the friends I made and continue to love here.

It shall be a day of big reunions
Of revisitations with people
and places
     and a chance to truly look at how far I have come...

To quote my younger self,

MAN: I hate birthdays.
Well, no. That's not true.
I don't hate birthdays.
I love birthdays.
There is nothing that gives me greater pleasure than reminding people how glad I am that they were born.
     I hate my birthday.
We know this. (Remember the Nietzsche-an spiral of 24? The way I tried to get a grip at 27? The way I kiiiiinda got that grip at 29?) 
It's a passage-of-time thing. (I think it is also why I don't like New Year's Eve, and cut flowers for opening night...I dunno...)
I'm working on it. 

Poor little younger Al. (I wish I could give her a squeeze and tell her it all gets so much better, and life gets so much richer and calmer and deeper once she turns 30...) That said, looking at the list of "31s" above, I have to say, this number is on point: this birthday year I feel truly in my prime, as well as centered and thirty-one-derful.

I own who I am.
Fully. Deeply. Truly

Alexandra Silber.
Al.
Woman.
Friend.
Traveler.
Adventurer.
Believer.
Artist.
Actor.
Singer (a hard-won self acceptance title!).
Teacher (the most thoroughly fulfilling aspect of my life thus far).
Writer.
American. 
Story-teller.
Listener.
Forever-learner.
Homebody. 
Taker of photographs.
Maker of kick-ass salads.
Handbag-rummager.
Lover of road trips.
     and crime drama.
     and books.
     and radio. 
     and baseball.
     and carnivals.
     and meteorology.
     and one-on-one talks.
     and vegetables.
     and hand-written correspondence.
     and the ocean.
     and Angela Lansbury.
Aunt.
Daughter.
Human being.

Here's to another year. 

September Soirée

September 1st is a very special day.
Isn't it just a beautiful phrase? "September the First..." --even the ring of it has a kind of musk. It is a beautiful date. And day.

But reader, September the 1st is my Father's birthday. And oh, how it sits there on the calendar, looming over the autumn; a date more laden with disquiet than even the anniversary of his death. Whoever knows why? The human psyche is one complex labyrinth...

On certain milestones I've marked the occasion with very special friends. On others, the day comes and goes with a peaceful acceptance of the unavoidable heavy-heartedness.
It ebbs and flows. Like everything.

But MAN: I hate birthdays.
Well, no. That's not true.
I don't hate birthdays.
I love birthdays.
There is nothing that gives me greater pleasure than reminding people how glad I am that they were born.
     I hate my birthday.
We know this. (Remember the Nietzsche-an spiral of 24? The way I tried to get a grip at 27? The way I kiiiiinda got that grip at 29?) 
It's a passage-of-time thing. (I think it is also why I don't like New Year's Eve, and cut flowers for opening night...I dunno...)
I'm working on it.


I admit I have a tendency to hermit myself in my utterly cozy "Winter Palace" (aka my apartment). I'm a creature who requires a great deal of time spent alone to process life; to defragment my hard drive, if you will. To sort through my emotional output, thoughts, ideas, imaginative musings, etc. And even beyond that: I actually enjoy my own company. For example: I had a truly invigorating weekend spent entirely alone two weeks ago--I literally cancelled all my plans (of which there can often be too many) and indulged myself in "The Cave."

Interestingly (though perhaps not at all surprisingly), all of my closest friends seem to truly understand this process, and are rarely annoyed with what some might consider being "out of touch..." I suppose that is how you know you've found your true friends. They accept you for who you are.

"The Cave" is a part of my process. As I am growing, I'm learning to accept it as such and not scold myself for being "anti-social." I am social--when I give you party OH: I give you party. Socializing is just something I do on my own terms! This is part of accepting myself as I am.

But it is a delicate balance:
one must be ever-vigilant to monitor where "meeting your needs for solitude" ends,
     and "HIDING" begins.
Again: I'm working on it.

     ...Meanwhile, back on earth...

With the incredible insistence of my mother (as well as an onslaught of friends), to *somehow* celebrate the milestone of my 30th birthday, I contemplated some sort of gathering.
Drinks in Manhattan?
A quiet gathering of special people at a restaurant? (Except the majority of my special people don't live in NYC)
A tiny bash at the Winter Palace? (I can throw a serious dinner party)
Again: it's complicated.
So what is one to do?
Well, there is the option of 'Ignoring It' (I usually adore that option) — But no.
Not this time.
Recently I have made a series of incredibly exciting "outside-the-box" choices.
I've been reaching out when I feel vulnerable (and not, as I have been known to do: after I have felt vulnerable with a full, enlightened and palatable book report on "How I handled my vulnerability all on my own Volume 3,937")
I've been trying new things.
I've been taking myself out on dates.
I've been spontaneously getting together with my friends regardless of my mood.
I've been taking calculated risks.
Calling people out of the blue.
Making honest bids for connection.

It has been extraordinarily exhilarating.


...So... wanna know what I decided to do?

I decided to throw a spontaneous gathering at my house over Labor Day weekend (because not all of us were going to be busy up at the Lake House). Spontaneous cocktails at The Winter Palace! A bazillion people came. From every corner of my life. It was the largest soirée I have ever thrown.

The emphasis was on opening my home, and subsequently, my heart, to friends.
To gathering together with interesting people over the Holiday Weekend.
To allowing a personal milestone to be marked on my own terms.
All on my Dad's birthday—this glorious September The First.
What better way to spend the day?
By opening up, and raising a glass with friends old and new.

I think Dad would have more than approved.

Cheers. To all.

a Family 4th

Nothing like force-feeding your nieces some good, hearty, patriotic musical theatre on the 4th of July... Someone oughtta open up a window...
A Musical 4th from Alexandra Silber on Vimeo.

30

Here it is.
The big Three-O.
Dirty 30.
The milestone of crazy women everywhere.
Let's review.

Thirty is:

- The sum of the first four squares, which makes it a square pyramidal number.
- The code for international direct dial phone calls to Greece
- The total number of major and minor keys in Western tonal music, including enharmonic equivalents!
- A semiperfect number (adding up some subsets of its divisors --e.g., 5, 10 and 15-- gives 30)
- The atomic number of zinc. 
- –30– is used to indicate the end of a newspaper (or broadcast) story, a copy editor's typographical notation.
- The number of days in the months April, June, September and November (and in very strange and unusual circumstances February—see February 30)
- The number of cars in the F-Zero franchise.
- The minimum age for United States senators
- The pearl wedding anniversary!
- The number of tracks on The Beatles' eponymous album, usually known as The White Album

But I think one thing is certain. When I look back, I will always know that I spent my 20s "figuring it out"-- and hadn't truly figured anything out, until now.
Not really.
... aaaaaand I am also pretty certain I will be saying THAT sentence again... many times over. For the rest of my life.

29 was a year of great overturn-- over the last year I have made some new resolutions, taken a conscious new course of action in my life, my career and my relationships...

Crucially this: this may come a surprise to those of you who know me as a "person who sings," but for whatever reason, singing has been a source of extraordinary emotional potency for me, and not always in a positive way.


I am going to let you in on a very personal experience, and I think you shall relate on some level. 

There is hardly a time I can remember when did not sing, with purity, and coming from a place of utter spiritual exuberance. I would sing around the house, in the shower and in the car almost unconsciously, I poured and poured over role models, I Singing was, in truth, my primary source of joy.

When my father died in 2001, my mother made an observation: I had stopped singing entirely.
No more did I sing blithely about the house.
No more recordings.
No more music, it would seem, at all.
For you see, there was nothing to be joyful about. 

It was entirely subconscious, but as I look back and unfold the deep layers of so complicated a time, I recognize that I stored the enormity of those feelings--all my confusion and anger and sorrow and grief-- in my voice. It was lodged there, a ball of delicate string growing more tangled and entrenched in itself every day... and I didn't even know. 

So what did I do?
I denied I was a singer.
I denied more lessons, any formal higher training.
I sewed up my throat and (with no regret whatsoever) got my degree in classical acting (and even subconsciously suggested I choreograph the Christmas pantomime so I could avoid singing one of the leads!)
My true nature caught up with me when Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Woman in White would not allow me to hide anymore... and I suppose the rest is sort of history. Whoever would have thought? Not me.

But here is the crucial revelation:

If I continued to say "I am not a singer" over and over again, that statement accomplished a few things:

1. It sent that exact message to The Universe, (and The Universe raged against my mind, and responded with a palpable vengeance...putting me into more and more confrontational situations with this GIANT LIE!)
2. It declared that everything I DID achieve as a singer was a "miracle" and...
3. ...everything I did NOT achieve was "not my fault" because I was "not a singer..."

But basically: it was not mature. 
It was a shallow attempt to "get off the hook" to absolve me of any form of personal responsibility. 
It was not the behavior of a woman.
It was not in line with my true nature, my deepest desires, or the essence of my morals.
It was the behavior of a scared little girl.

So, with the help of a few dedicated (and very compassionate) people, I decided, quite consciously (and with gut-wrenching, sometimes literally paralyzing terror), to become the singer I knew I was.
To throw myself in head first, and know that if I truly failed, at least I would always know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I failed honestly.

To accept responsibility.
To accept myself.
...isn't that what this whole business of life is all about?

We all do this-- with our careers, our relationships, our everyday interactions with our inner-consciousness. There's a wonderful quote from Nora Ephron's You've Got Mail where Meg Ryan's character Kathleen says

"Sometimes I wonder about my life. I lead a small life - well, valuable, but small - and sometimes I wonder, do I do it because I like it, or because I haven't been brave..."

After a few months of soul-crushing work:
Carnegie Hall called...
Then Caramoor Music Festival...
...and then what for me was the job of a lifetime singing Maria in West Side Story with the San Francisco Symphony on the history making, first-ever symphonic recording of the iconic piece.

I dunno.
Somehow?
Somehow I think The Universe might have been saying

"...Well...? FINALLY..."

...Not that anyone probably believed my bulls*** in the first place...

And so, I, like so many before me, have spent my 20s truly becoming myself.
I stand before you today truly owning it all.
Owning my strengths.
My power.
My Achilles-heels.
My insecurites.
My needs.
My deepest and more profoundly wished-for hopes and dreams.

As I spent the very last day of my 20s singing "Tonight" and "One Hand, One Heart" and "I Feel Pretty" out across the San Francisco Symphony, I felt my cells actually turn over. At the stroke of midnight, when some of the greatest musicians in the world sang "Happy Birthday" I felt it: life would not, could not, ever be the same. For when you not only take responsibility for you life, but for who you truly are, the world unfolds itself before you like a flower.

It is my belief that it is our primary objective, our most crucial human vocation, to continue this process throughout the course of our lives.
I vow to do so.

That is what a true birth-day, is all about.

Twenty-Nine

It has become an annual tradition (with myself, and I do suppose with all of you) to share my birthday reflections. I must say, this year, both the day itself and the reflection has snuck up on me.

Soooo.

29.

Hello there.

29:

The atomic number of copper

The number of days in a lunar month

The track from which the Chattanooga Choo Choo train departs in the Glenn Miller song.

Saturn's number of years to orbit around the Sun

 29 is a Markov,  Perrin, and Størmer number.

A beautiful prime number (technically the tenth prime number, a twin prime pair with thirty-one, the sixth Sophie Germain prime, a Lucas prime, a Pell prime, a Pillai prime, the 10th supersingular prime, and an Eisenstein prime!) Plus a tetranacci number. YO. 

The number of letters in the Turkish, Finnish, Swedish, Faroese, Danish and Norwegian alphabets.

"$29.00" - A on the album Blue Valentine by Tom Waits.

AND, the iiiiiiiiinfamous N-29 night bus that got me home so MANY a time from Central London all the way north to Wood Green. 

*

You know, every seven years we have a complete new body of cells-- our bodies are literally fully transformed, our cells completely turned over, a complete body chemistry change and a need for unfolding. Twenty-nine is the first step in external integration with the rest of the world. 
It is a cycle. 
It does not come to "get you." 
It comes to present you with an opportunity.

And every age has special things to be known, understood, and worked with. There is no time in your life that does not have validity.

This year I know I actually felt my cells turning over--every single one of them. My mind, my body, my outlook, my spirit, has been transformed. As I stand here, a new body, a new self, I also realize that for the last 20 years or so, I have been in "survival" mode: frankly, using achievement and a driving sense of life purpose to keep away pain and fear.

I am no longer surviving. This year (through particularly uncomfortably difficult inner work), I healed those wounds. I am moving into a phase of life where I can expect more than survival. I can choose to thrive. To build a positive life, throw light along the dark and unknown tunnel of the future full of the knowledge that there is nothing to fear that I have not already met, seen and conquered.

...That is the best birthday gift of all.
To look ahead with such extraordinary inner peace...
              and excitement.