Even Mentors Are Mortal
Just as echo is lingering sound and shadow is the imprint of light, our legacies are the surplus of life.
This past December, I had the honor of studying with a profoundly great musician and artist, Meredith Monk. Our group retreat spent four days quietly meditating in the snow, gently moving our bodies and exploring new depths of our voices in the woods of upstate New York.
At age 83, Meredith Monk is an artist who has enjoyed great success and recognition within her lifetime. She acknowledges how special a circumstance that is, that many artists do not get a chance to enjoy. She is still exploding with ideas and what seems like boundless amounts of energy and focus. But even our great mentors and teachers are mortal. Meredith shared some reflections that she had on her own aging process through a Q&A session.
Meredith acknowledged that she can’t quite predict how her voice will work anymore. She doesn’t have the endurance she feels she once did both as a movement artist and as a singer, but she still feels the urge to create and explore just as freshly as ever. Bringing her art forth into the world had always felt like a great responsibility, almost teetering on a burden. She is questioning how to release that burden, wind down, and pass the torch onto the next generation.
Musicians and creatives fight endlessly for new opportunities and for their voices to be heard in the world. But what does it look like to wind down? It’s the stark opposite of the hustle we are all so used to engaging in. What does it look like to shift our goal away from performance, external validation, and recognition towards a cultural conversation which could live on well beyond our physical existence?
As a teaching artist myself, this weekend made me reflect on how we artists achieve lasting legacies through building community and embedding what we have found inspiring into the memories of others. This weekend retreat was truly a space to both shed, loosen our grips, and to plant tiny seeds for new growth towards the future no matter where we currently sit within the cycle of life and death.
Just as echo is lingering sound and shadow is the imprint of light, our legacies are the surplus of life.
⭐️ Give the gift of music to the bereaved
⭐️ Support death positive public programs delivered through music
⭐️ Sponsor a person in need of death doula support (end of life planning and legacy building)
Make a TAX DEDUCTIBLE donation to Sound and Memory
