The Door Closed, the Music Began

Closing the Door

I remember the day I walked out of my dance studio for the very last time. I stood at the front door exhausted, covered in dust and sweat from packing, cleaning, and moving out.

Standing there with one hand on the doorknob, I could still hear the echoes of percussive footwork and the aggressive strum of flamenco guitar that had accompanied every day of my life for almost twenty years.

During rehearsals for our annual student showcase, the studio had transformed into a magical place that I had somehow conjured out of sheer will and passion for the art form.

Even now, I could see the dancers reviewing the choreography I had taught them, their fingers tightly strapped into castanets while their arms moved effortlessly yet precisely through the air.

I remembered the singer closing her eyes, warming up her voice to produce the haunting sounds that would set the mood for the opening sequence.

Finally, I could still hear the unmistakable attack of flamenco guitar: the nails striking the nylon strings, the syncopation, the Phrygian scales pulling on my heartstrings like they did so many years before, when all I knew about flamenco was that it came from somewhere in Spain.

I closed the door behind me and dropped the keys in the mail slot like my landlord had instructed. And just like that, this chapter in my life was over.

The arthritis in my foot had finally gotten the better of me, and that, paired with becoming a new mother, made me feel like the right time to move on to the next chapter was now.

Searching for What’s Next

In the days and months that followed, in the quiet fog of everyday mindless tasks, I wondered if I would ever feel a deep sense of competency and accomplishment again.

How do you go, at 46 years old, from a dance career where dozens of people rely on you for classes, performances, and inspiration, to the seemingly endless treadmill of routine, far from any spotlight?

I felt empty. Would my kids ever know who I was now that the best part of me was rendered silent?

As a child, lack of creativity was never my problem. At school, I was terrible at math (and a few other subjects), but I could set up a play overnight complete with costumes, a script, and usually some kind of musical interlude thanks to a toy keyboard I had taught myself to play.

Could I still rely on that sense of play to learn something new at this stage? Had I already exhausted my creative well with dance?

A New Medium

The answer to my questions came unexpectedly while watching School of Rock with my daughter. The students of Jack Black’s character each had their own little story to tell—stories that could be channeled through their instruments.

My daughter Rose loved the movie, and I could almost hear the gears in her brain starting to turn. What kid hasn’t at some point dreamed of becoming a rock star?

But my gears were starting to turn as well. Maybe I still had a story or two in me. I just needed a new medium.

That’s when I realized guitars had always been tied to my best memories growing up. It started with my father sitting on the carpeted floor in front of his Hi-Fi stereo equipment making mixed tapes on weekends, David Gilmour’s solo on “Comfortably Numb” making the room disappear with the bending of his strings.

I had no idea what the song was about, but that solo tore me up every time.

Years later, my stepfather introduced me to Pat Metheny. For months, I would walk to school listening to “Secret History” on my Walkman, creating my own secret stories in my head. Finally, I heard flamenco guitar for the first time, and it changed me forever.

The music seemed to capture emotions and memories I had carried with me always but had no way of expressing. I packed my bags and took my first in a series of trips to Seville to learn how to dance flamenco, just so I could hear that sound every day.

So what would it feel like now to be able to pick up a guitar and learn how to create a mood, an emotion, tell a story? Better yet, what if I could share the experience with my daughter, now that my retirement had opened up so much more time and space to be with her?

Learning Together

Rose loved the idea of learning “how to rock,” so one day we enrolled in our local School of Rock and began our journey. I was fifty-one and she was six and a half.

That first class was brutal. My fingers were weak and awkward, and I felt the oldest I’d ever felt in my life! But week after week, my daughter and I walked home and compared notes, and I didn’t really care that my progress was slow.

I remember walking by a shop window once and catching a glimpse of both of us with our guitars strapped to our backs, and I had to fight back tears.

We were doing this. I was doing this.

The first song I learned was “Linger” by the Cranberries (one of my all-time favorites from college), then an obscure piece by Radiohead that taught me about arpeggios and patience and breaking the rules of music theory.

Then, thanks to a random bluegrass introduction while flipping stations in the car, an obsession with Billy Strings took hold, inspiring me to buy my first acoustic guitar—a Martin 0-18 that I named Lucinda.

A New Stage

With the chords I’ve learned over the past year and a half, I’ve written a few songs and I’m practicing every day for my first open mic.

When I think about stepping on stage again after all these years—not as a dancer this time, but as someone with six strings and my own voice—I feel that familiar mix of terror and excitement that means you’re about to do something that matters.

The stories I tell now are my own. They are accounts, dreams, snapshots of what it feels like to be alive in all its contradictions. I have no idea if they’re any good, but I’ve come to realize that’s hardly the point.

Rose and I are still taking classes every week with an obligatory ice cream stop before each lesson. Regardless of how far we take our respective guitar journeys, we’ll forever remember these moments together. And I’ll know, beyond a doubt, that it’s never too late to express your authentic self.

That, above all, is the best lesson I can hope to share with her.

The door to my dance studio may have closed, but the story we’re writing together—Rose and me and our guitars—is just beginning.