What the Patina of Wisdom Sounds Like
Last month I had one of those moments where you realize something's shifted in you as an artist.
I was invited to a monthly gathering of musicians who get together to read, play, and offer feedback on each other's arrangements. My arranger, Josh May, had expanded my two holiday arrangements from a jazz combo to a full big band, and he asked me to perform them with the group.
Twenty years ago, I would have been warming up in a corner, running vocal exercises, trying to psych myself up. But this time? I found myself doing something different: nothing.
I just sat there. Present. Confident in what I was going to do.
I've been calling myself a "Wild Elder in Training" for a couple of years now. But sitting in that room, I felt it land in a new way. This is what I've been growing into.
I've been thinking a lot about what age and experience give an artist. Not just technically—though that matters—but something less tangible. A kind of patina that blankets the art.
Patina: a surface appearance of something grown beautiful especially with age or use.
I first understood this decades ago in a Chicago jazz club. It was one of those open-mic nights where young players could sit in with seasoned musicians to hone their chops. A young drummer was at the kit, doing what young drummers do: playing fast, playing loud, burning through all that youthful energy and ambition. Nothing wrong with that—it's part of the path.
Then a tiny man walked in. Gray goatee. Beret. Coat a little oversized. The moment he entered, the energy in the room shifted. He listened for a while. Then he walked over, tapped the young drummer on the shoulder, and without missing a beat, they switched places.
What happened next changed how I understood music. For the first time, I heard notes coming from a drum. Not just rhythm—melody. Feeling. Soul. The difference between what the young drummer played and what the elder played was profound.
That night taught me something about the arts that I've never forgotten: there's a kind of wisdom that can only come from years of living, playing, failing, and getting back up. And when an artist lets that wisdom inform their work—instead of trying to recreate what they were at twenty-five—something magical happens.
I've never been about over-singing—my style has always leaned more subtle than loud. I realize now, maybe that's because my mentors were significantly older than I was when I started, and they were teaching me through the lens of their “artist patina.”
Sitting in that rehearsal room last month, I had a realization. I wasn't a singer trying to prove herself anymore—I was an artist experiencing “being” Wild Elder in Training.
And honestly? It felt like coming home.
It's got me thinking...
What if wild elderhood isn't about slowing down or playing it safe? What if it's about trusting the lens that experience gives you -honoring your art not with more effort, but with more presence?
Whatever your medium—music, visual art, dance, theater—I think this is the invitation that time eventually offers all of us.