I have noticed that I am extremely prolific during a certain time of the month. The words and ideas just flow out of me. Unfortunately, it only lasts for a day or two; hence, the extremely long dry spells in my blogging.
I guess there is scientific evidence to back this up that hormones affect women's creative juices, something about estrogen or progesterone flooding your brain with creativity, blah, blah, blah. If this is the case, what's going to happen when I hit menopause? Will my brain just slowly dry up like a desert preserved raisin? Menopause is a topic I have become more and more obsessed with, to be more specific, perimenopause, because I think I'm currently in the throes of it. There are things sagging that I didn’t even know could sag. Well, that could be age or childbirth, some of it is a toss up. And for you woman who are currently childfree who innocently think you can avoid drooping breasts by not breastfeeding your child, if and when you decide to end your childfreeness, I have news for you. Your boobs are going to get big one way or the other, then they’ll engorge, and then they will deflate, forevvvveeerrrrr. So you might as well get some use out of them while you can.
I know 39 is a little early for worrying about perimenopause symptoms, but I’m a hypochondriac and 39 is about 94 in music years, which is perhaps why I seem to be having this psychological block to producing another record. When you have 13-year-olds out there who have already achieved success, I begin to feel like a has-been at 39 without ever having been. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not looking for rock star fame. I’m afraid I’d go a little Britney Spears with the lack of privacy, shaving my head after dangling my child from a freeway overpass (no, she hasn’t done the latter yet, but give her time). But really, what is left to me now? As Dave increasingly reminds me, jazz is a genre that is timeless, with elderly piano greats virtually keeling over the keyboard while in concert. But there are 2 significant elements I am missing. I am not a jazz great and doubt strongly I ever will be (although Ella Fitzgerald did hit her prime at 40), and I’m just a vocalist. (Q: How do you put a sparkle in a female singers’s eye?A: Shine a flashlight in her ear. ) And the few things a vocalist has going for her besides her voice is her looks, and nobody wants to look at an old hag singing Rod Stewart’s “If you want my body and you think I’m sexy.” Frankly, I really don’t want to see Rod Stewart perform it anymore.
