“Does This New Album Make Me Look Old?”
When my first record and publishing deal fell apart, I was told by everyone I worked with in the music industry that I was too old to start over. It was “too late” and I’d “blown my one chance.”
In truth, it was not just my music career that was nearly destroyed — it was all of me. I was thirty years old and I felt like my life was over. At the same time, I saw up-and-coming male artists, well over thirty and newly on the rise. I came to understand that while men could take their time in creating their lives, careers, and families, women were not afforded the same luxury.
My generation of girls was not encouraged to “love ourselves.” While we were encouraged to “follow our dreams,” it was perhaps even more important to look good while doing it. We did not talk about self-love. We were taught to view other women as competition in an ever-shrinking pool of opportunity.
Millennials have introduced a culture of purpose, community, and radical self-acceptance, but there is still too much money to be made in keeping us insecure. As women, we are programmed to believe there is an expiration date on our viability and desirability as creators, employees, partners, and people, that our lives become less valuable after a certain point, our wisdom and experience irrelevant in a popular culture obsessed with youth and physical beauty.
This needs to change.
But before we can change the world, we have to change ourselves. So I am re-igniting my own career. I want to prove what is possible when we believe in ourselves and never give up, and I want to inspire other people to do the same.
I launched my Indiegogo campaign on March 8th, and I am raising funds for the recording, release, and promotion of my first album in five years. And while I’m excited and optimistic, I find myself facing down some of my greatest fears.
The vulnerability necessary to launch this campaign completely freaks me out. I’ve told the world I was already 30+ years old when I left my record label more than 8 years ago, I’ve revealed the fact that I don’t make much money with my music these days, and I’ve always been told that in order to succeed, a certain level of fronting is required. I see this in the tech community all the time. Everyone is “CRUSHING IT!!!” Success seems hinged on one’s ability to be perceived as already successful. And here I am letting a bunch of people know that I haven’t been successful in a while and I need their help to change that.
My fear of asking for help is reinforced when my father does not understand the concept of crowdfunding, or why anyone would want to do it.
“You’re asking people to give you money to record your album, and they’re just going to give it to you? Who would do that?”
He doesn’t mean to be hurtful — he’s one of my biggest fans — he’s just old school. So I ask him if he would contribute $20 if John Prine sent out the same email. I asked him to imagine a world in which some stranger believed in me as much as he believes in John Prine, as much as my dad believes in me. And he smiled. He got it.
On off days, when I can’t find a valid reason within the confines of my own life to justify emailing a wealthy friend a re-worded version of the same “Please support my campaign!” email I’ve sent three times to no effect, I think of people I don’t know, other women who’ve given up on themselves, and how my story of determination and perseverance might make a difference in someone’s life.
I know how it feels to be a woman on what someone once referred to in my presence as “the wrong side of thirty.” I know what it feels like to be told someone in the industry is not interested in listening to my music because they “already have a 20-year old who is doing basically the same thing,” as if a number is the most important determining factor in the value, substance, and quality of art. (And if I were a man, would you have asked my age? Probably not. And is that question even legal??)
So this one’s for the ladies. For those of us who know how it feels to grow up believing we have a shelf life, making sacrifices in one area or another because we were told we could not have it all, regretting the decision we made when things went awry, and fearing it was too late to pick ourselves up and start again.
There’s a line in one of my new songs (and yes, it will be on the new album!), For My Last Number, about a magician in a traveling circus:
“Please show me something
I want to believe,
In this life of illusion
It’s myself I have deceived…”
I want to believe. And I want everyone else to believe, too — that we can do anything, be anything, at any point in our lives. That it’s never too late to start again. I want all of us to leave behind every notion of limitation, every idea of “time running out” on our dreams. On us. I want you to believe in me. I want to believe in you. And to believe in you, and for you to believe in me, I must first believe in myself.
And so it begins.
Please visit my Indiegogo campaing here: http://igg.me/at/terranaomi
Please enjoy my new song “Help You Fly,” created with content from people around the world https://youtu.be/gLkW84yUssU
