Living a Happy Life in Song

My newest journal writing workshop starts on Saturday at the Newberry Library. A four-week series, “The Purpose of Aging, Aging with Purpose,” filled at 15 people, and I can’t wait to meet and work with each of them. It’s thrilling whenever a new workshop finds an audience, especially one focused on this particular chapter of our lives.

In the workshop description, I describe four categories of writing prompts that we’ll use during our weekly sessions: mind, body, spirit, and story. I’ve designed each of these to help us “best define and manage our own aging process.”

Of course, much has been written about this “new” old age, and I’ve devoured many of the articles, essays, and books on the subject. One of them, from the March 4, 2018 print edition of the New York Times had particular resonance because it celebrates a passion of mine: singing. For me, all music, and particularly the kind I help make, goes on my list of spiritual experiences, and so is one of the ways I manage my own aging process.

Borrowing from online definitions of spirit/spiritual, I think of these as moments that “can be felt to be present, but cannot be seen.” They can relate or affect my “human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things.” Now I can’t tell you what I think the soul is, but I feel its presence whenever I sing—especially in my little church choir.

Now that choir is a long way from the 1,000+ retirees who sing in the Encore Creativity for Older Adults chorale program described in the New York Times article, but the experiences of three of them reflect my own.

Here are excerpts from “Singing Their Way Through Retirement,” by Noah Weiland:

Howard Smith, 89

“Music is life,” he said. “I know that if I keep going to rehearsals for what we’re doing this coming season, that everything will be fulfilled. It’s what I really wanted to do. I didn’t have that opportunity professionally, but I’ve had it here.”

 “Singing to me is the best medicine,” he said. “It makes you want to live a little longer.”

Tom Hoppin, 79

“We [in the chorus] are mutually dependent on one another,” he said. “There’s a sense of reliance.”

“There’s always an element of the spiritual side, in the sense that we’re living out of our own selves into a creative art.”

Tony Tambasco, 78

“We’re singing a piece now that says, ‘viva la musica,’” he said. “It’s a piece that’s very melodic. I get choked up when I’m singing it sometimes. It’s hard to even sing it because I feel like I want to tear up in the middle of it.”

The music “has an effect on mind and heart,” he said, adding, “It makes for a happy life.”

I agree, Tony, that singing’s effect on my mind and heart indeed makes for a happy life.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/25/business/retirement/singing-chorus.html