an occasional series of conversations and interviews with our creative elders
These audio programmes are available on the “Am I Old Yet?” podcast channel in your favourite podcasting apps, as well as via the website https://amIoldyet.com. Full transcripts are available on this page.
Are You Old Yet? Singing into Elderhood with Frankie Armstron
Flloyd
Thunder’s Mouth Theatre Presents am I old yet? Although this week I’m continuing with the occasional series of interviews that I’m calling “Are You Old Yet?” in which I engage in conversations and interviews with friends and colleagues of mine, all of whom have passed their 70th birthdays while still being as creatively active as they ever have been.
Frankie
[SINGING] Lady Margaret, Lady Margaret sewing of her seam / and she’s all dressed in black / When a thought comes to her head / she’d run into the woods / pick flowers to flower her hat, me boys. Pick flowers to flower her hat. So she’s hoisted up her petticoats / a bit above her knee / and so nimbly she’s run o’er the plain / and when…
Flloyd
My guest today is Frankie Armstrong. Singer, activist, teacher, workshop leader. Also known as the Godmother of the Natural Voice movement worldwide. The Natural Voice Movement encourages and supports community singing groups who allow people to join without auditioning. And they learn the songs by ear, so there’s no need for any prior musical education or experience. If you look up Natural Voice Network online, you’ll find a group somewhere near where you live.
Now, I’ve known Frankie since I first arrived in the U. K. In 1967 when she was a member of you and McColl’s critics group in London. And she is the one who first encouraged me to sing folk songs. Frankie sings traditional and contemporary songs, writing some herself. The song you hear in the background is Tam Lin, one of the multi-verse traditional ballads that she is famous for.
Frankie
[SINGING] To ask her true love’s name / but she’s nothing…
Flloyd
Right, so, Frankie Armstrong, welcome to my little podcast show. And you know what the title is, but we’ll save that question for a little bit down the track. So, first of all, Frankie, how do you describe yourself, what you do?
Frankie
I describe myself as someone passionate about voice and what voice can do. So I suppose as a singer of both traditional and contemporary songs and as a teacher helping people to gain confidence and discover what their voices can do. So I think that’s me.
Flloyd
That pretty much covers you, yeah, [LAUGHS] certainly. In your professional life. Fantastic. Yeah. So you’ve been singing, Frankie. When did you start?
Frankie
Well, I always enjoyed singing at home as a kid and on outings or anything like that. But publicly, when I was 16, [LAUGHS] I was still at school and I actually sang with a skiffle group in a pub not far from my gell’s grammar school. And I sang songs like “Freight Train” and “The House of the Rising Sun”. It’s quite intriguing to think there I was, 16 year old, I think I’d gone home and changed out of my school uniform by that’s good. The skiffle group. We had a gig, we didn’t get paid, but the lads got beer and I got orange juice and sandwiches.
Flloyd
Oh, excellent. Yeah.
Frankie
1957!
Flloyd
Wow. Yeah. So was that actually your first introduction to folk music as such? Did you think of it as folk music?
Frankie
Oh, yes. I mean, American Blues and folk music, but folk still at that stage, kind of had a bit of kind of Miss Pringle round the piano singing “Early One Morning”.
Flloyd
Even in Australia, we had to do that.
Frankie
If you talk about rough folk music yes. That had to wait till I was 16.
Flloyd
Yeah. Skipping along here. But I first met you in London in early 1967 when you were with The Critics Group
Frankie
and you joined us.
Flloyd
Well, eventually I joined yes. I met this boy, as you know, a Scottish lad called Donnie, and he persuaded me to give up my ambitions of being a musical comedy theatre star and turn my attention to folk music and dragged me along to the Singers Club in London. And that’s where I met you and Ewan (McColl) and Peggy Seeger. Interestingly enough, if we sort of flip right to the now: you’re still singing, Peggy’s still singing. I’m still singing.
Frankie
and Sandra (Kerr) is still singing.
Flloyd
Yes, exactly.
Frankie
It’s the women of the Critics Group who are still active.
Flloyd
I hadn’t thought of that. Yes, that’s it.
Frankie
Oh, absolutely.
Flloyd
Yeah.
Frankie
Brian does little
Flloyd
yes. Brian Pearson
Frankie
It doesn’t mean much to other people. And John Faulkner is still performing, but he’s the only person who’s still kind of touring and performing.
Flloyd
Right. Yes. Wonderful. Okay, Frankie, let’s just dive into this. Now, tell me, are you old yet?
Frankie
[LAUGHS] It all depends on what you mean by old
Flloyd
doesn’t it just?.
Frankie
Let’s face it, 100 years ago, average age expectancy was in the late 40s, early 50s? I think so. It was very clear if you were 70 or 80, you were old. It’s a lot more difficult to figure out now that we’ve stretched age expectancy into the 80s. But somehow there shouldn’t be any sense of shame or approbrium, or a thing called ageism, because we’re lucky if we get to be old, and we’re even luckier if we get to be active and old and still engaged in the things that we have passion and excitement for, which I am.
Frankie
So, yes, I am old, but with a different definition of what that means because we all have to die, for heaven’s sake, at some stage. We can’t, you know, get to this age, we can’t miss out. [LAUGHING]
Flloyd
[LAUGHS] Not really.
Frankie
I think the problem is we are in a culture that really is in denial of death.
Flloyd
Yes. It’s not denial of getting older, but it is denial of death. I absolutely agree with you. And this whole sense that the word “old” carries this connotation of being so close to death that what’s the point in bothering with you at all? And I think that’s the whole ageist agenda. Because I was just having this conversation with somebody yesterday, which I can’t remember who it was because I’m old and was talking about—he was saying he’s not— won’t get the pension until he’s 68, but by the time he is 68, they’ll probably have made it 70. And I was reminding him or informing him, whoever he was. That’s annoying me. Now, I can’t remember who it was, it’s only yesterday, but when the pension was invented, you know, old age pension was invented in New Zealand, around about 1890, something like that, they hit on the age of 60 to be eligible for the pension because they seriously did not expect people to live much longer than 60.
Frankie
That’s right. And I’m of an age that I got my pension age 60, and I was still traveling the world, working, touring, teaching. I put it all in a special pot for a year in order to fund me to come over to the Indigenous Australian Centenary Festival in the middle of Australia and Alice Springs, with the largest group of Aboriginal indigenous Australians ever experienced to be in one place. So that was my celebration of getting my pension at 60. I thought I wanted to go and do something to take me across the world and do something really unique and exciting. And it was.
Flloyd
Yes. How wonderful. What year was that, Frankie, when that happened?
Frankie
Well, of course, 91.
Flloyd
Oh, that was 91, right?
Frankie
No, 2001. The year of Federation. Oh, yes. From Australian Federation. Yes, of course, 201.
Flloyd
Yes.
Frankie
[LAUGHING] 2000.
Flloyd
I know. Yeah, I know. For me, I know my voice has aged, it has changed over the years, which you don’t realize is going to happen when you’re young. You think, oh, this is a voice I’ve got, and that’s it. And it takes a while over the years to realize that it’s changing. I mean, I know mine’s deepened. I always had an alto, sort of vaguely contralto-ish kind of a voice, but I’ve become more comfortable with using it. How about you?
Frankie
I’m still kind of working that one out because actually, I discovered that an upper voice kind of—partly because I got vocal coaching at a time at which life was distressing, because my brother had terminal cancer and my mom had developed dementia. So I know I tightened up and things didn’t feel as comfortable and so I virtually lost my upper register. So I then went and had wonderful—found a wonderful teacher and he kind of got me back—quite a large area of my upper register, which age is now robbing from me again. Comfortably being able to kind of weave up and down. So I’m being encouraged by another wonderful voice coach to get back into using the area that I did used to use largely, which, as you say, is the kind of middle to lower part of your voice. So I’m reworking that in and starting to feel more comfortable with it.
Flloyd
Yes. And I think we can cheerily give a shout out to Mark Meylan, who you put me on to as well. A wonderful vocal coach, based in London, works with a lot of West End musical people, and, of course, the fabulous Joanna Cazden, who’s based in California. And she’s been very active in the VASTA, the Voice and Speech Trainers Association as well. And a good buddy to both of us. We’ve both done work with Joanna. She’s the go-to girl. Yeah,
Frankie
Absolutely. It’s never too late to go and see find somebody who can help.
Flloyd
Absolutely. It’s never too late. One should never —it’s like you should never be put off singing when you’re small. I think there should be a special place in Hades for teachers who tell small children that they can’t sing
Frankie
absolutely,
Flloyd
it’s abuse. And then as you get older and your voice does start to lose tone of course our muscles lose tone as we age, it’s going to happen but then to think as my mother did, she stopped singing when she was in her, I would say 50s just going “can’t do it, no, you don’t want to hear me”.
And I did want to hear her and she simply would not sing and she was hypercritical if she heard older people singing with a bit of a quaver and she think “oh, they shouldn’t be singing”.
Frankie
Oh, that’s so sad, because the interest I developed in the early 60s, in British folk song, a lot of the fine singers who’d learnt songs from their family and who were carrying songs that had been around for centuries and therefore were very much part of our history—particularly women’s history, because women don’t appear too much in history, the formal history books. So we got incredibly excited about what we could learn about —quote— “ordinary women” who weren’t queens or duchesses, mistresses of kings. About songs—and of course a lot of those singers were relatively older. They were recorded in their 60s, 70s, sometimes even 80s. Some of them still had totally intact voices which meant you knew that you could still have an intact voice if you were lucky. But others were obviously getting on and were being recorded having maybe not sung in public for maybe a decade or something but they still carry a song. They could still tell a story. They could still move you. That’s what’s important—not whether you have the voice perfect or the voice ideal.
Flloyd
Yes, absolutely. Someone again, someone—I don’t know if it was the same person I was talking to yesterday or if it was two days ago or two weeks ago, but they were saying to me they were listening to a younger singer who was singing with a kind of a quavery voice. And they said, “does that come from when they were collecting songs? And they were collecting them from older people. So they thought that was just how folk music was sung”. And I think there is an element of that. Or there was, anyway. Not so much now. I think young singers coming through are doing it their way, which is fabulous. .
Frankie
Yeah I mean, the important thing is the song and the communicating of the song. It’s still difficult if you felt you used to be able to do that with relative ease. To kind of feel—oh, you know, I need to be more discreet about where I pitch it and how I use my voice. And certain sounds can kind of challenge you, shall we say?
Flloyd
Yes.
Frankie
In a way, you have to maybe work at things a bit more than you did when you took your voice for granted and felt that it was there to do the song justice.
Flloyd
Absolutely, yes.
Frankie
But it’s still communicating the importance of what it is that you want to communicate how you want to move people, whether it’s to laughter or to tears.
Flloyd
Yeah. And as you and I both know, as being people who’ve studied the anatomy of the vocal instrument, which is, as we also both know, the whole body self. But muscle tone does evaporate as you get older. It’s a fact of life, it’s a fact of the nature. And if you don’t use it, you lose it. So you just have to keep doing it, but you have to do it more. The older you get, the more work you actually have to do to keep that muscle tone. And you can get it back and you can build on it to a certain extent.
Yeah. Which is heartening. But you can’t sit back and not sing for a fortnight and then get up and expect it to be there.
Frankie
And as you say, because it’s your whole body. The first thing I do in the morning after cup of tea, feeding the cats, is to do exercises for best part of half an hour most mornings. That’s because the muscles that you need are both the muscles in your throat, but largely the muscles in your trunk and your diaphragm go through the middle of your body and held up by your feet and your legs. So the more you can keep them all functioning.
Flloyd
Yes. Exactly. So the idea of being old and still being able to do the stuff that you love, to whatever degree, because you love doing it and because it has value and having that sense that you still have something to offer and if people don’t want it, that’s their choice.
Frankie
Flloyd, that was just so beautifully expressed.
Flloyd
Thank you. Yeah, one of my rants I get on my rants quite often.
Frankie
[SINGING] A mute bird sat by her / was maintained by her moan /Sing Willow, willow, willow/ The true tears fell from her, / Would have melted a stone / oh, willow, willow, willow, willow / oh willow, willow, willow, willow..—
Flloyd
Okay, so, Frankie, I understand you’ve got gigs coming up.
Frankie
Well, yeah, I’m singing down at the Cardiff—the Wales Millenium Centre—on Friday evening with a woman called Rebecca Morden who set up with other team, a thing called Greenham Women Everywhere. So it’s websites, photos, events, connections, Zooms of women who were involved in the Greenham Peace Camp back 41 -2 years ago now. And the march to Greenham Common to demand that we don’t have Cruise and nuclear missiles there started from Cardiff, in fact, which is where I am. So Rebecca is going to talk about that read from the book that they called Out of the Darkness after a song that I wrote for the Greenham Peace Women.
So she then asked me to go and sing the song and a couple more songs while she’s introducing and talking about the book, before a play that is opening on Friday, which is—I haven’t seen it yet, but it’s obviously about women who get involved in the peace camp. All right. And then on Tuesday, which is the press night for the play, which is called Ess and Flow, the press night, I’m singing with the trio I sing with, who also run singing groups and community choirs and belong to our Natural Voice Network. So Pauline, Laura and myself are singing for half an hour before the play on the press night.
Flloyd
Yes. Right. So that reminds me two things that I wanted to ask you about. One was your activism using your voice and your creative writing expression as an activist. Do you remember when you first sort of got the bug?
Frankie
Well, in a sense, it depends what you call activism. But I know that when I was working as a receptionist in a factory, when I was about 19, 20, before I went into social work and singing, I used to go around the offices in the factory and collect for Oxfam and I put on concerts, back where I lived in Hartfordshire for money for Oxfam. So being concerned about poverty, famine, inequality was something that was just built into me from my parents. So when I started singing and singing with professional singers, it just made sense to keep doing things like that kind of benefit.
Then when we joined the Critics Group, we did things. I did things. My first big solo gig was in Trafalgar Square in 1966 at the biggest first anti-Vietnam War project.
Flloyd
Yes.
Frankie
And in the Critics Group, we did things for medical aid for Vietnam. And then it morphed into anti apartheid and CND and Chile Solidarity Campaign after the coup, horrible, right wing, murderous coup in Chile. So I just kind of got swept into all these to sing and to do. I’m not a songwriter, I’m an occasional songwriter. But some of the songs I have written were precisely for those kinds of big demonstrations and marches and events. And in fact, last weekend at the Big One, on Sunday, I was up there and I got roped into singing A Message from Mother Earth because it was largely focused on climate, the climate emergency and climate catastrophe that is imminent if we don’t do something about it.
Flloyd
Right.
Frankie
So even three was is that three, four days ago? I was still at it.
Flloyd
[LAUGHING] And she’s not going to stop anytime soon.
Frankie
Not on Friday or Tuesday, for sure.
Flloyd
Yeah. So just having a little bit of think of the range of the music that you sing over the years, you’re kind of famous for singing very long ballads. Tam Lin comes to mind. Have you ever counted how many verses there are in your version of Tam Lin?
Frankie
33.
Flloyd
How many?
Frankie
33.
Flloyd
33. Yes. What a feat of memory. I wouldn’t even dare to attempt that without having the screen in front of me, giving me the words. Funny.
Frankie
I still use things like doctor’s and dentist’s waiting rooms to go back through ballads that I haven’t abandoned, that I may not—haven’t sung for a while, but I want to keep them alive. The wordings alive in my head.
Flloyd
and you’re such a fantastic storyteller, as you say. And then, of course, there are the more politically oriented. I mean, “Bread and Roses” is one of my favorites, which you’ve got out on your CD, Cats of Coven Lawn with your trio. Who are the other ones in the trio again?
Frankie
Pauline Down and Laura Bradshaw.
Flloyd
Yes. Great
Frankie
They run groups. Laura runs a big and in incredible busy-ness, the Oasis Choir, which is for refugees and asylum seekers. And Pauline runs a group, or starting it up again for veterans who were injured out of all the various horrible things that Britain got itself involved in, in Iraq and Afghanistan. And she periodically runs wonderful women’s groups and improvisation groups. So we’re all still very active. But I am the oldest, I’m quite proud to say.
Flloyd
Wonderful. And the other one, which is actually my favorite CD of all of yours is— I can’t remember the name of it. It’s the one you did with Dave what’s his name? The Brecht-Weil one—
Frankie
guitarist and blues singer. “Let no one deceive you”.
Flloyd
There you go. Yes.
Frankie
Title of the CD of songs of Bertholt Brecht with Eissler and Kurt Weil.
Flloyd
Yes. I’m going to play a little couple of verses of Alabama Story, which, again, is my favorite of all of those. I just love it. I just love it. Yeah. Great. Okay. Now, Frankie, I think we have probably run out of time, which doesn’t mean it’s the end of our conversation because we talk at least once a fortnight and I see you roundabout once a fortnight because you run those wonderful little sessions on Zoom with your mates from all around the world. The music shares, which is what keeps me going as far as singing is concerned.
Frankie
Well, and me over COVID and yeah— it’s just been so important, hasn’t it?
Flloyd
Absolutely.
Frankie
People who share not maybe the same kind of music all the time as you, as I say, Terry comes and plays Bach and other people. Well, like, you sing your own songs and Shanee sings wonderful songs of Joni Mitchell and Jake Thackery. Brian sings ballads and his own songs. It’s wonderful to have that sense of a music family.
Flloyd
Exactly. Yes. Wonderful. Well, Frankie, thank you so much for coming along to my little chat show here and telling us all about your attitude to oldness [LAUGHS] and talking about singing. It’s always great to talk with you about singing, Frankie.
Frankie
Well, it’s one of our favorite subjects, let’s face it.
Flloyd
Isn’t it just? Yes. Okay. All right. Until next time. Tuesday, in fact. Next Tuesday. I’ll see you then. Bye.
Frankie
Okay, bye.
Frankie
[SINGING]Oh, show us the waiter the next whisky bar / oh, don’t ask why / oh, don’t ask why for we must find the next whisky bar / for if we don’t find the next whisky bar / I’ll tell you we must die I tell you, we must die./ I tell you, I tell you, I Tell you we must die./ Oh moon of Alabama…
Flloyd
Well now and that’s it for our time spent with Frankie Armstrong. The songs that you heard, the first one was Tam Lin, traditional song, traditional ballad. The one in the middle was the Willow song from Frankie’s album (Frankie with friends) “The Cats of Coven Lawn”. And the last one there was the Alabama Song by Berthold Brecht and Kurt Weil from the album “Let No One Deceive You”, which is Frankie Armstrong and Dave Von Ronk.
Now, I’m not going to make any promises about what’s going to be up on this podcast next week, because I’m finding that I’m not the only person who’s busy at this time of the year. A lot of the actors are as well. So we’re still working on getting Season 8 recorded and ready to go. Whatever it is, I’ll have something up there. So in the meantime, the theme music that’s played on this podcast is from John T. La Barbera. Thanks, John.
If you’re enjoying these talks and rants and conversations and songs and silly stories, please share it with your mates. Spread the word. And if you’d like to support the making of the podcast, you can do that over at the website, www.amIoldyet.com/donate.
Thanks for listening. Stay safe.
The Songs
Tam Lin – Traditional. Album Ballads (a Fellside compilation of singers performing traditional ballads
Willow Song – traditional. Album Cats of Coven Lawn
Alabamy Song – Berthold Brecht and Kurt Weil – from the album Let No one Deceive You
Frankie Armstrong and Dave Van Ronk perform the songs of Bertolt Brecht, with composers Kurt Weil and Hanns Eisler.
Are You Old Yet? Transitioning into Elderhood with Margi Brown Ash. Part 1
Flloyd and Margi share some memories and ideals in a conversation that spans international travel in our youth, politics (“Albo” refers to Australia’s current Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese), attitudes to ageing, the effect of the internet on our brains and how we transition into our Elderhood. They touch upon epigenetics, wisdom, parenting, teaching pedagogies, leadership, creative collaboration.
Flloyd
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Thunder’s Mouth Theatre presents… something very different for you. Today I have embarked on a series of interviews which I’m calling—wait for it—Are You Old Yet? Because the idea is that I’m interviewing people of my generation. I mentioned this to someone who said, “oh, is it all only going to be creative people?” And I thought, I only know creative people. So yes. Now, the first cab off the rank here is Margi Brown Ash. Margi is as well as being the patron of Thunder’s Mouth Theatre, and a jolly good friend for good 20-25 years or so.
Margi is, Margi is a theatre maker, she’s a performer, she’s a collaborative mentor and arts supervisor, and she’s a writer and she lives in Brisbane and Sydney, shares her time—she’s got family and work in both places. And we got talking. Margi insisted that rather than an interview, we made this a conversation. So I talk way too much. We chatted about—well, you’ll find out what we chatted about. I hope you enjoy it.
Oh, gosh, Margi, it really is so great, so great to have you just sitting there and we’re chatting and I haven’t seen you for at least seven and a half years because that’s how long I’ve been back in the UK.
Margi
Oh, wow. Yeah, that’s a long time. That’s gone fast.
Flloyd
It has.
Margi
And Flloyd, you’re happy with that decision? Because I always think of you and I think, oh, Flloyd, if you’re in Queensland with us, you wouldn’t be cold.
Flloyd
But you know what, Margi, if I was in Queensland with you, I’d be hot. Yes. And not in a good way.
Margi
There are fires going across Queensland at the moment again.
Flloyd
Oh, gawd.
Margi
The heat is extraordinary up there at the moment.
Flloyd
Yeah, no, I am very happy with the way this has turned out, because when I came back to Australia, when I was in my fifties, the first summer, I just thought I was going to die. I just could not handle it. I could not function in that heat. And it’s way hotter now than it was like back in the 1990s.
Margi
You managed to function, Flloyd, you got a PhD.
Flloyd
I know, my son bought me an air conditioner.
Margi
Yes, I get it.
Flloyd
Yeah. So, yeah, I did function, but to not be able to even go for a walk and here I can walk at any time of the day and it’s never going to be so hot that I’ll get burnt where my skin, just as a child.
Margi
Yeah.
Flloyd
Where did you grow up, Margaret?
Margi
New South Wales. I grew up in country New South Wales, and then when I was at university age I went to Sydney and then from there I sort of launched myself around the world, but yeah, primarily country, New South Wales. So I’m a country girl. Yeah.
Flloyd
Well, I was born in Yass.
Margi
Were you? So you’re a country girl too. And then when did you go to North Queensland?
Flloyd
We moved to North Queensland when I was about—well, we went to Thursday Island first, when I was four, and then five, we were in Cairns and I started school in Townsville before my 6th birthday. And then we were in PNG, where it was even hotter.
Margi
So what did your dad and mum do?
Flloyd
Well, my dad was first and foremost, he was a sailor. He adored being on boats. He’d run away to sea when he was 14, I think, and his parents went and got him back. But then when he was 16, he just joined the Merchant Navy and he just adored being at sea. So he was a sea captain. He was also a scally wag who would just, like, take off, have a brilliant idea, forget to send money back. So my mother became a dressmaker seamstress. She always sewed, and a lot of it she did at home, making curtains and that sort of stuff.
But she used to make all our clothes. Yeah. So that’s how she sort of supported us.
Margi
And how, did do you sew?
Flloyd
I do well. I don’t do very often, but I have a sewing machine on and off. I’ll have a sewing machine. I’ll move I’ll sell the sewing machine and move to a new place and then I’ll buy another one. That’s how it goes, probably.
Margi
Good.
Flloyd
Well, it’s handy. Yeah.
Margi
They probably need replacing every few years.
Flloyd
Well, I get a cheaper one every time. They brought the price down.
Margi
Hugely interesting, isn’t it? And I always think of flights like that. But back in the day in 78, I headed for London and to get a ticket to, I went through the US and to get a ticket to New York with only about $1700. That was a flexible ticket. And I think that the price isn’t any different now. It could be not post, but now we’re in Pandemic, it could be different. But they didn’t go up very similar.
Flloyd
No, they kept—new airlines would come in and undercut, and they managed to keep it that way. My first trip overseas was by sea. I got one of the last sea voyages when it was cheaper to travel by sea than by air. So, yeah, I took off June July 66 with a friend that I’d met at Brisbane Arts Theatre.
Margi
Was that on the way to London?
Flloyd
Yes, our big plan our plan was… it was a Greek ship and it stopped in Athens. Well, Piraeus, the port for Athens. And then we overlanded to London, stopping off to do some au pairing on the way.
Margi
Do you have very fond memories of that trip?
Flloyd
I do. Very fond, yeah. It was exciting. It was scary in the best possible way Being a good Australian socialis—I don’t know where I got it from, but I was. When I discovered what socialism was after I’d arrived in London and I fell in with a group of Marxists, rabid Marxist Leninists, and and I said, well, what is it? What is it? And they said, well, it’s about everybody sort of clubbing together to look after people, making sure that’s community and I said, well, isn’t that just being a decent human being? That’s my politics for you.
Margi
I like those politics because I agree with you. I think that’s why I like leaning to the left, because it is a way of acknowledging that we are all one. But that has gone by the by for a little while.
Flloyd
Well, if you look at the history of the Labor Party in Australia especially, but here as well, those ideals weren’t actually what—they were quite—they were just about looking after their own. I found myself teaching modern Australian history at ACU in Brisbane for a year, so I had to rapidly learn some. Fascinating, and I learned just how deeply, deeply racist the Australian Labor Party had been from its inception.
Margi
Hopefully our Albo (Anthony Albinese, current Prime Minister of Australia) isn’t like that. I’ve got a lot of time for his politics. Not everything I agree with, to be honest, but I think we’re on track to change here. But you know what I’m interested in, because I think in my life, it’s happened too, that the biggest trip, the first trip, like, my first trip away was in 70, and I was an exchange student in Houston, Texas, for a year. And I think that that trip had a profound impact on my life. And I’m just wondering whether that trip that you did in 66 had a profound influence.
That first trip that we do away as adults, we not got parents looking after us, but as adults,
Flloyd
yeah, I think it did, because it gave me well, it was that. I mean, I was 21, 22, very naive, emotionally very immature, and so it was just Kathy and me with my idealistic “no class” system. We booked on a ship that was one class. However, it had about six decks, and if you paid more, you were on the top deck looking out. And so we went for the second bottom deck, and the first thing we did was sort of ask around. Was there anybody—what groups could you join? And we fell in with a bunch of young people who were all theatre people.
There were musicians, there were actors. There were about a dozen of us. And we sort of formed ourselves—when I think back, you could say we formed ourselves into a concert party. So the ship, they had certain events, like crossing the equator, some festival things that— there was a fancy dress costume, and they just called for volunteers from the passengers to entertain. There weren’t entertainment troops on board. You did your own and sort of coming out of the sort of pro am Brisbane Rep and Brisbane Arts, which is what I’d been involved in for, like, the three years that I’d been in Brisbane.
Suddenly I found myself in a situation of initiating stuff rather than doing what I was told. And so you have an idea. Somebody says, what are we going to do? And I say, well, there’s this Goon song that’s just silly. And they said, how does it go? They said, what was it? [SINGING] “If you’re feeling pimply and your knees are turning blue, don’t be nervous, simply go ee-ah-oo-oo-oo”. So I pulled all my memory of ballet lessons when I was eight years old and tap to choreograph a little sort of thing to go with it. So I found myself doing that and working with these people.
They were mostly from Melbourne, some much more experienced performers as well. And it was a really fun—once I got over the seasickness—experience and then finding myself in Greece. And I can remember an occasion we’d gone to, I think it’s a beach just outside of Athens, and just looking around and thinking, this is a country that has had to fight for itself here. And that feels different from Australia, obviously, white girl perspective and in ignorance of a lot of what had gone on as well at that stage. I learned so much more about what Australian settlement effect had in Australia, in this country, from watching documentaries than I ever learned before I left.
So much more, but yes, and that whole experience of just being in other cultures and with no sense of judgment, just, oh, is that how you do that? Oh, that’s interesting. Just complete washing. Washed awash in it, immersed in it. Yeah, it was pretty amazing.
Margi
They talk about it’s a baptism of fire, like we all went over. And I think it’s quite different now because our kids, even with parents, travel so much more than our generation and just seeing the different generations. Something I’m really interested in is how do we deal—I guess my thesis at the moment is how do we deal with aging, making sure that our generation has motivational and interesting and challenging ways of being in the world rather than playing bingo and going to the RSL and playing bridge. I just see a vast difference between our generation and our parents generation.
Not that my mother ever played bridge, but my mother in law did. It was very big in her life, that sort of friendship. But I just think it is so important and I don’t think we’re there yet. I don’t think that we’ve worked out how to deal with ourselves as older people. And I guess that’s a mission that I have that I really want to interrogate around the world, how people are doing that and how organizations are doing that. Because I think gone is the time where you can just go up to an old person and say, “hello, darling, how are you? Do you want a cup of tea?” I think we’ve gone beyond that. “Can you help me with this political issue, please?” It should be something like that because supposedly the new research shows that our brains get stronger. We may forget superficial things, but we actually have far more capacity as we age because we also have patience woven in there and the ability to reflect. Now, I’m not talking about everyone. Some people don’t have the ability to reflect, and that how the Internet could actually be at the same time as building us up, tearing us down. The idea that we can’t concentrate and there’s a book that I’ve just bought called ‘The Stolen Focus’.
Probably, you would probably be interested in this ‘Stolen Focus’, and it talks about how the social media and things like that, the bytes we can’t concentrate longer than a byte of information anymore. And that means that we can’t focus on the issues that are truly destroying us, like climate change. We can’t focus on that long enough. So it’s like, oh, climate change… we’ve gone. We’ve allowed it in for a minute, and then we’re on to the next post. This is incredibly concerning, and how do we, as elders and I think our job is to do this, how do we help that next generation coming through? Avoid the pitfalls, and then maybe help the next generation. I think that we’ve got to start small. Maybe we’ve just got to help ourselves.
Flloyd
Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Lovely that you dived into that. And I’m hearing where you’re coming from, because I don’t know if I told you, but when I had the idea, thinking, oh, I could interview people of my age, nobody else is doing that. I can do that. And as against the podcast, which is called “Am I Old yet?” Because this was the question that I had originally, I would call it “Are You Old Yet?” At some stage of the interview, I will hit my interviewee with this question, and because you dived in there, I’m already going, okay, Margi’s where I was ten years ago.
This is so interesting because, again, my brilliant idea when I first had it was I’ll interview people over 70. You’re not over 70.
Margi
I am.
Flloyd
Are you?
Margi
I’m 70, yeah.
Flloyd
Oh, you hit it, all right. Old. In that case… [PAUSE IN THE INTERVIEW]
“How do you oh, Flloyd, you look marvellous for your age”. And I hate it! What? I either look marvellous or I don’t. You know, it’s got nothing to do with age.
Margi
I agree with you totally. I just—they’re the sort of things we’re going to get rid of.
Flloyd
So I have been thinking about this stuff for years now. I’ve been examining myself. So this whole idea of “what is my problem?” I can remember my mother in her 90s, being very cross with my older sister, who would then have been in her 60s, calling herself an old woman. My mother was outraged at this. But my sister is one of these people who has kind of always been an old woman. It’s interesting, her attitudes. She’s one of the ones that she doesn’t play bridge or anything, but she’s settled, she settles the stuff and I never did. We’re just two different, totally different people. So the idea that when you’re young, you’re young, and then we had this youth culture that started really pushing itself out in the where young people were allowed to say well, speaking is a young person, and me in my forties and fifties going, “what’s that got to do with it?” So then there comes a point where you have to go, “well, I suppose I’m middle aged, I’d rather be young, but I’m middle aged”. But then there comes a point where you’re not middle aged anymore, but you’re not allowed to call yourself old.
So I sort of set off on a mission to reclaim the word old and that’s how the podcast came about. But the more I had Helen in the podcast examining this question and debating it with her friends and her daughters, the more I realized there is so much—it’s the baggage attached to that word “old”, which we as a culture, and it’s not just Western culture either, it happens in just about every culture. There comes a point where you’re past it in the eyes of younger people and you don’t want to be thought of as past it. So you can’t say you’re old, because if you’re old, you’re past it.
Old means decrepit, useless, worn out, death door, all of these negative things. So we don’t have a word that’s just states this is the generation I’m in. It’s this generation.
Margi
What about elderhood?
Flloyd
Elderhood’s great, but it’s for special occasions. It’s just not—I love that you just use it naturally, it just flows out of you. But society isn’t there yet.
Margi
And if you look at the word “old”, when we say,” oh, that’s old”, like we’re looking at a chair, “oh, that’s so old, there’s no way I can let’s just toss it”. I think that we use it in so many ways that that infects when we’re talking about people, if we can, some words aren’t appropriate to apply to people and why I just like to replace it. Old can be old for other things, but I think that it’s so deeply entrenched old. We discard because we society in the west that eldership I embrace. I love being an elder.
I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to be younger than I am ever. Because there’s so much richness as we age and as we understand and not talk, because we know that things change and so you hear young people talking. Now, I could interrupt that and sort of add a little bit of wisdom, but perhaps it’s not even necessary because they will reach their own wisdom at the perfect time for them. So I think that as I have aged, the need to fix things has certainly reduced enormously. And that could have something to do with my therapeutic training because that’s what we’re training to do.
Well, of course it has something to do with that, but it also has in my private life, I think. “Is it worth it?” You weigh up before you… So it’s the reflective thinking skills that we develop as we grow older and the fact that it doesn’t stop. You used the word “settling” earlier, and I thought that was a marvelous word because that’s what I think in our world, we cannot afford to do. Can I add the word next to “settling”? “Comfort”. We want to be comfortable. And I think the more we [MARGI DEMONSTRATES HER NICE CUSHIONS] says on all these pillows! we have to be comfortable—
But we don’t have to have pillows from the most exclusive shop in town. “Comfort” is scary for me. As soon as I start to feel comfortable, I go,” oh, Margi, turn on your reflective skills again”. I think it’s the downfall. And I’m not talking about basic needs. We need you in England. I do worry about you, Flloyd, being cold, because I hate being cold. You hate being hot, so you worry about that. I think that there are things that it is good to have some sort of comfort in and a safe house, I think is very important.
My PhD was “Home and Belonging”. I mean, I investigated that thoroughly. But yet settling and comfort—danger.
Flloyd
As someone who has always moved from my childhood, we were moving every three years, if not more often. Right through my childhood. I went on into adulthood feeling three years are up, I better move. Whereas my sister, who had exactly the same upbringing, she didn’t. She just wanted to be there with the nice house and the hubby and the kids and do her thing there and not move. So it’s not just the upbringing. Obviously there’s something in the genes. A lot of my father, I think his rat bag,” I’m off. I’ve had a brilliant idea, I’m off” sort of thing.
Margi
Yeah, but Flloyd, have you been reading Bruce Lipton’s work on epigenetics? Now, I think you might be interested in this. He’s written this book called The Biology of Belief and he believes deeply, and he’s a well renowned scientist, that the genes have about 1%. It is environment because the genes change with environment. The environment impacts the genes and can turn them on. And to me that is such a beautiful freedom because I’m working on a play at the moment with Zach Callahan, used to be Stace. Callahan. You know, we’ve got a grant from Pride, Australia and some other organization to write this play about transitioning.
And they have a mother, and I’m going to be playing the mother, but I may not I might get someone else to play it. I don’t know if I’d want to perform anymore. They have a mother who has dementia. So what comes up with the children of people who have had parents with dementia? “Oh, that might be me”, but in fact, that’s not necessarily the case. It can be the case if you don’t change your behaviors because it’s the environment that dictates as opposed to the small influence of genetics. Epigenetics.
Flloyd
Yeah, I should check it out. What are we talking about?
Margi
I think that we were talking about settling and comfort and old and the word “elder”. And the other word that I’d love to talk a little bit about is “wisdom”, because unless we develop our wisdom, growing old is not a guarantee that we are growing wise.
Flloyd
No, absolutely.
Margi
It’s another thing that’s scary about our world because I think it’s even more now because we can escape. We can escape into our fluff hood.
Flloyd
But yes, but I come back to—I really admire your passion and your ambition in this, and I hope you succeed. I have a very cynical brain, which I
Margi
I know you do!
Flloyd
My mother modeled this cynicism for me, very much so. And it doesn’t matter that when she got into her fifties and she married my lovely stepfather Monty, and she found Jesus, and a lot changed. She changed a lot of her behavior and her attitude. She changed in her 50s, but still, that cynicism was there. It’s a habit. So, yeah, I look forward to seeing how it goes.
I do feel, again, just my experience that there are people like, there are people—just as there are people who do things, and there are people who let things be done, to have things done to them. They don’t have whatever, the thing that says, “I’m going to be just doing this thing now, I’m going to change, and I’m going to do that”. There are people who stay, as you say, they are modeled. They grow up in a stable environment. And the thing you do is you get married, marry the girl next door, you get a job just like Dad or Mum, and you have kids and you do that.
And they are the majority of people worldwide, they just want a comfortable life, and they will do the thing that they believe is going to give it to them. And then there is the minority, which is us, who want something else, who want something more than a comfortable life, who actually want to be creating something, making something out of nothing but ourselves, if you like, which is what art is. I saw— this is a total diversion, but two things. Having a conversation with Ira Seidenstein and then watching a video of a wonderful Mime, a Polish Mime artist that I’d never heard of before because they both had very fascinating stories about how they got into being the clown or the mime, the teachers that they both became.
Margi
Who was the Polish Mime? I studied Polish Mime in New York City.
Flloyd
The one that you studied with. I looked him up. I couldn’t pronounce his name.
Margi
Stefan Niedziałkowski.
Flloyd
Thank you. Yes, him. Yes, I saw that you’d studied with him. I went, “who is this mine?” So I found him. So the question came into my mind to ask and never to answer, if you like. Are artists born? Can they be made or do they make themselves? Now, he clearly made himself with the help of his teachers and his mentors, Ira, exactly the same. He made himself the clown that he is with the help of all the teachers and the mentors and the wonderful artists that he’s worked with as well. But this also comes out of that.
Did I say I was on this Zoom call with these voice teachers last night, or was I? No, I was telling Iain, forget who I’ve said things to. It was a young woman voice teacher. She’s trying to form a panel for the VASTA Conference in May or June or August, whenever it is. And the first question she asked was, “how should we be teaching? Should we be teaching the way we are taught, passing on what was given to us by our teachers, their pedagogy? Or should we be arriving at our own way of teaching”? And I had to leap in and say, “Please do the second please, please, pretty please”.
But it is that question about how we teach, how we train for you. And for me, it’s not about, oh, I have a methodology, and if you do my methodology, it’ll be wonderful. It’s about who are you, what do you want to do? How can I facilitate you to do that thing that you want to do.
Margi
Using my methodology, please.
Flloyd
Well, absolutely, because my way is the only way. [LAUGHING]
Margi
I think that binaries can get in the way. It’s a little bit of this and a little bit of that. I think it’s really useful.
Flloyd
That’s exactly what it is, it’s use. And your way of doing it is going to be the way you do that methodology.
Margi
If it’s a collaborative practice, which is what I’m sure, but the idea of collaborative work is what I’ve studied for decades—I think that then people have a choice. So even though I have a rigorous framework in which I work, people have enormous space within that framework. Whereas there are other methodologies. For example, probably back I mean, it’s so long ago since I did Polish Mime, but it certainly has influenced my work enormously, back in the— also, the other physical theatre work that has influenced me greatly was Frank Theatre, John and Jacquie. But the methodologies were very strong and very “you do it this way”, but I think that is fabulous as a base.
And if you have developed your critical thinking skills, you are then able to force that into something that is more suitable for the generation that you’re teaching. Because every generation is different. The generation we are dealing with at the moment. My grandkids are younger than yours and they are growing up in a pandemic world. One has never knowns anything else. One has known three years of something else, but nothing since. Very different. Everything will be different for those young kids and and the importance of turning up for them and helping them through those differences.
Flloyd
Well, now I’m hitting the pause button on this conversation between myself and Margi Brown Ash here, and I’m calling this Transitioning into Elderhood Part 1. Part 2 will follow in due course. The music you heard is written and performed by composer, arranger and multi instrumentalist John T. LaBarbera. You can download his music on Bandcamp or via his website. JohnTLabarbera.com
Now, my devious plan is to actually have a return to the Adventures of Helen as the Chosen One, up and running by next week. So normal service is about to be resumed. And then I’ll post more of these episodes of my chat with Margi and some of my other friends and colleagues down the track in the new podcast series “Are You Old Yet? Occasional series of interviews.
Okay, now, if you are enjoying this, I do hope you will spread the word with your friends. That’s the only way we grow our audience is by word of mouth. So spread the word. Thanks for listening. Stay safe.
REFERENCES
The Stolen Focus by Johann Hari
The Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton
Stefan Niedzialkowski – Polish Mime Artist
Ira Seidenstein – Clown Master
VASTA – Voice & Speech Trainers Association