Dear Mary,
Do you think it’s possible to become a songwriter later in life?
- Gail
Pullman, WA
Dear Gail,
For me, songwriting is a calling. A calling presents itself as a tiny, nagging thought or far-off feeling that grows, and sooner or later begins to consume your mind and drive the decisions of your everyday life. A calling works on a timeline of its own. It can surface quickly or take decades to fully announce itself. One thing is for certain, unlike whims, callings endure.
The call to song first came to me when I was in my teens. I bought a guitar, a Mel Bay chord book, and learned to play. I was unable to embrace songwriting without encouragement and support. With no creative community to help guide my young heart’s desire, I was too wounded and insecure to go it alone, so I stopped trying.
Every couple of years, the call to song would resurface. I’d try to write, but along the way, vulnerability would fill me with terror. I know now that there’s no songwriting without vulnerability. Instead of running to my heart’s desire, my calling, I ran from it.
Then, I dismissed it.
I put songwriting in the category of “childish things.” Corinthians 13:11 reads, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put aside childish things.” I figured my desire to write songs was a childish whim. I told myself it was good that I’d grown up and left it behind. I put my guitar in a case, left it there, and banished songwriting from my mind to pursue other things.
I completely forgot I ever longed to write songs.
I went to culinary school, found investors, and opened a couple of restaurants. I stayed very busy, intensely focused on success in my businesses. The guitar stayed in its case in a hall closet, and the call to song laid buried in my subconscious mind for years, dormant and unspoken, a truth I’d successfully hidden from myself.
Then I got sober.
During moments of silence and stillness in my early sobriety, when I was not busy with the extreme demands of running multiple restaurants and juggling thousands of items on an endless to do list, I felt an aching deep in my heart. A voice in my head whispered, “Do you really want this life? Endless busy work, the endless churn of acquisition?” At dusk, perhaps, when I was driving on an empty highway listening to a song I loved, or when I sat by the fireplace after reading the last page of an incredible book and looked out the window at snow falling, the voice would ask, “Is this all there is?”
Recovery from addiction asked me to be honest, and the truth was, I was not happy in the restaurant business. I liked dreaming them up and making them work, but running them made me feel trapped. I longed to transcend the confines of the routine I’d made myself a slave to.
My life changed the night I went to an open mic and saw a room full of entry level songwriters take their turn on stage. Sitting in that club, watching the courage of those young artists was a lightbulb moment for me. I knew right then, instantly, what I wanted.. It was what I’d wanted to do since I was a teenager. I wanted to write an original song and sing it on stage. And within a few months, I did.
I began writing songs in my mid-thirties, which is hardly “later in life,” but the music business is youth driven, and I was well aware of the age difference between me and the other songwriters when I started playing open mics.
No matter, I began showing up to my writing desk daily, playing out nightly, and slowly coming to terms with my calling. Ten years after that lightbulb moment, at age 40, I moved to Nashville to start a new career: Songwriter.
So, to answer your question, do I think you can become a songwriter later in life, my answer is yes. You can. I did!
But answering a calling does not require you to make a career of it. Answering is exactly that - saying, “Hey there! I hear you, and I will dedicate a part of my being to what you are asking. I’ll put time aside to get good at it, and I’ll give it my best.
I’ve taught hundreds of songwriters in their sixties and seventies, many of whom were just getting started. Most were aware of the call to song inside themselves for decades, but they’d left it unanswered, thinking it was childish. They moved through their lives, got “real” jobs, raised their families. They shyly answered the call only after their children were grown and they’d retired from their careers.
It is forever thrilling for me to see the joy on a songwriter’s face as they take their first steps in the direction of their heart’s desire. Some cry when they share their first song with a group of other songwriters who are rooting for them and support their efforts.
Gail, my guess is the call to song has been inside you for a while, probably quite a while. Festering underneath a million rationalizations and excuses, sitting dormant, waiting. The calling will never knock down your door or jump up and down to get your attention. It simply waits for you to be ready. Answering it will catapult you into a new reality, but you have no way of knowing that. Not answering it will leave parts of you unrealized, and to me, this is a sad state of affairs. I shiver to think of all the souls who have left this earth impoverished for having not answered their calling. One of the reasons I decided to pursue songwriting was that I did not want to be on my death bed full of regret, wishing I’d had the courage to do so.
"If you bring forth what is within you,
what you bring forth will save you.
If you do not bring forth what is within you,
what you do not bring forth will destroy you."
- Jesus, The Gospel of Thomas
Callings, like wounds, when ignored, denied, repressed, neglected or pushed away, will begin to fester and can eventually poison us. Those called to song would benefit from answering. Not because the world needs more songs, but because to ignore your heart’s desire is to ignore your creator’s instructions. Creating art by writing songs, is about growing the heart and soul and increasing their reach. It has more to do with the act of creation itself than what is actually made. That said, what is made might be exactly what a soul needs. But you’ll never know, if you don’t answer the call.
- Mary