How to Live the Creative Life with Singer, Writer & Author Carolyn Sloan

CAROLYN SLOAN BEGAN PLAYING classical piano at age seven and attended the illustrious Performing Arts “Fame” High School in Manhattan. At age 15, Carolyn became a professional singer. Enamored with world of singer/songwriters, she spent much of her early twenties writing and performing her own compositions and then began writing for theater. Her theater songs have been critically acclaimed, considered by the New York Times, as “deeply touching and especially moving.” She is a singer, composer, writer, teacher, and the author of several books. Listen in and read along as we discuss how to live the creative life.

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Today my guest is writer Carolyn Sloan. Carolyn is a singer, composer, a writer, a teacher, and an author. Her three books include Finding Your Voice: A Practical and Spiritual Guide to Singing and Living, Welcome to the Symphony: An Exploration of the Orchestra Using Beethoven Symphony Number Five, and Welcome to Jazz: A Swing Along Celebration of America’s Music. Her songs have been performed on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, The Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, in theaters off Broadway on radio and television, and on concert stages around the world. Welcome, Carolyn.

Carolyn: Thank you for having me, Marion. I’m so glad to be here.

Marion: Well, it’s a joy and you are a creative in the truest sense of the word which is why I so wanted to speak with you. I marvel at your breadth and I suspect that breadth is hard won. So let’s set this up for my readers who are writers and who want to know how to live a creative life. You’re the daughter of two New York City public school teachers. You began playing classical piano at age seven and attended the illustrious Performing Arts High School in Manhattan, that one that we know from the movie Fame. At 15, you became a professional singer. So where and what did you perform at that age of 15?

Carolyn: Well, it’s kind of a funny story because I was obviously in high school at the time and I had become friends with three boys, and I think it’s fair that I call them boys at that time. None of us were older than 15 and we just would sing and harmonize together in the halls of school all afternoon or in between classes. And they were singing in Central Park one afternoon and some record producers heard them. And I was not there. The record producers suggested that they’d like to hear them with a female voice. Do they have a friend who also sings with them? So of course I was the obvious person that they were going to choose because that’s exactly what we were doing at school anyway. And we became a group overnight. And it was not the epitome of an original band because it was really contrived, but we were modeled after, if you can imagine, The Beach Boys and the skateboarding was very big at the time.

And yeah, I know it’s kind of silly story, but it’s true. And we became Sneakers and Lace and we were to skateboarding what The Beach Boys were supposedly to surfing. It was a little contrived, but I think the creativity, if you will, behind it was the fact that we were so into music that even in our free time before the producers had heard these guys in the park, we’d sing at school so much and write songs together and just hang out. And there was this very profound need to express oneself. And I think that was the earmark, this desire to be heard to express oneself that really started it. The group itself was really a commercial convention, but our association, our friendship was based in creativity.

Marion: Well, and that’s the root of it. And you began writing for theater, television, advertising campaigns with jingles for Ford, Glad, Weight Watchers and Tampax. You are the absolute perfect person to ask about creating a life that is based in what we truly want to do, but also earns money also. So after all, we can’t simply make our art and hope that someone knocks on the door and says, “Oh, here’s some money for that, by the way. You didn’t know you needed it, but you do.” So what did you first learn that you can share about taking one’s talent into the marketplace when you started to literally make money from your art?

Carolyn: You know, I’m a very practical person and I think it comes from being the daughter of two public school teachers. We didn’t have a lot of money growing up and I was always inventing ways to earn more allowance or earn some money on the side even while I was going to school. So I think I knew that art has both commercial expression and also simply a creative and artistic one. So I thought, well, how can I use my skills and make some money? And I had a friend who was in a theater writing workshop with me and he was writing jingles at the time. And I said, “Okay, Michael, you have to tell me. How do I do this? How do I get into this? Because I need to make some money.”

I also, just as an aside, when I was growing up, I used to ride in the car with my parents and we’d pass all these billboards and we’d take these long trips up to the Catskill Mountains where we used to go for the summers and I would be bored. And so I would look at the advertisements and I would, in my head, just start putting them to music. So if there was something that said Rice Krispies Are Good, I would just be singing (singing). I just make up these songs along the way just to entertain myself. And so when I got the opportunity to actually write something for advertising, I found that I was pretty good at it. But that came from really years of working, writing songs in theater, and writing songs for dramatic production. So I think it just came from being practical and wanting to earn money.

Marion: Yeah. As so much of our motivation as artists does, it leads us to a place of how can I monetize this? And both of those answers you just gave us have to do with voice. And you have this beautiful book called Finding Your Voice, A Practical and Spiritual Guide to Singing and Living, first published by Hyperion in 1999. And I have to say, it’s the last phrase in that title that deeply intrigued me — “singing and living.” This book combines memoir, voice exercises, as well as a deeply spiritual take on connecting with our own emotional lives. But it begins with a confession in the introduction, that deeply critical voice that exists inside our heads and how it can silence us.

This is a throw down that sets up the whole book and your authority and rolls out the rest of the tale. So let’s talk about that deeply critical voice that could have kept you from singing Rice Krispies in the Catskills, or could have kept you from this creative life. I recently interviewed Anna Quindlen, author of 21 books, winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Pretty much everything she knows about writing is there on the page in her new book about the power of writing. And she admitted in the interview that she every single day confronts that voice of doubt. So what is it and how do you deal with it? I always thought it was so generous of you to open that book with that doubt.

Carolyn: I think as humans, I don’t know what it is, but from the people that I’ve spoken with, we do all have this voice that tells us, “Oh, maybe we’re not good enough,” or, “I don’t think we can do this,” or. I also knew that I had incorporated a lot of the other negative voices around me. “Oh, well that’s not really a practical career choice,” or, “You don’t sound like Barbara Streisand,” or, “You don’t sound like Madonna.” That’s a big one for singers, this comparison. And I think it’s a big one for most performing artists. I’m not sure as a writer, because I write mainly nonfiction, I don’t compare myself as a writer to great novelists for instance. But I think that this comparison or this voice that we’re always having obviously can be very destructive and it can silence us.

I think over the years, I’ve learned to accept my own individuality and that this is a good thing, and that no one looks like me so no one’s going to sound like me, and no one’s going to think like me and that’s a good thing. And that I put it in terms of music often when I actually teach voice. And I say, “Look, if we all sang exactly the same way, and we all on the same beat with the same note and the same tamra, it would all be monotone. And where would be the music? There would be none.

Music is different notes. Music is different sounds, different rhythms all coming together to form this incredible sound, this tapestry of sound. So it’s the precisely the difference that exists in each of us, the individuality that needs to be celebrated, in order for this music to happen, in order for the beauty in the world to be apparent. So I think as I started looking at it in broader sense, I gave myself permission to be different. And I gave myself permission to be human and fallible and didn’t hold myself to measuring up to some external.

Marion: Oh, that’s a great answer and very helpful, very, very, very helpful. And I wasn’t a bit surprised in a book on finding one’s own voice to find a large, deep pool of wisdom on grief. You state that “singing aids us in grieving and suits us when we’re wounded much in the same way it helps us to celebrate.” And you say that when we voice our feelings, we begin to heal. And I agree with you. But I did not know I believed this too about singing until I read your line. So let’s talk about that kind of transparency. By writing that, you changed my consciousness. And I began to connect what I always tell my writing students that I don’t know how I feel about anything until I write it down.

But I started to think about I don’t know anything until I write it down, but I didn’t know you could connect oh, grief and voice. And there is just this lovely continuum of thinking and learning when we share what we really, really feel. And I do believe it changes consciousness. So this kind of transparency is needed for books to work, but it’s hard. So first talk about giving yourself the go ahead. I hate to say giving yourself permission, but giving yourself the go ahead to write a book that encompasses your holistic philosophy and does so through this great belief you have on voice and its power.

Carolyn: You know, it’s interesting, Marion. I don’t know if I can put it in the terms of giving myself permission rather than it was something that I felt like I had to do. And I think it came from actually great, I’ll say pain and not even discomfort. Because traditional voice training, traditional vocal training, is usually very based in exercise and developing vocal quality. And all of that is really important. But really what people connect to in a voice is not necessarily just the actual sound of the voice. It’s what’s coming through that sound. It is everything that voice has encountered for its life, for that person’s life. And it’s those singers that can let their, for lack of a better word, souls through in that sound. The hurt, the joy, the emotion, that’s what we connect with.

And I felt I had to say that because I had gone through so many years of training where no one said that, where no one recommended to really connect with how I was feeling. And perhaps maybe I didn’t have the best instruction. I can’t even really evaluate that now objectively. But it was so important for me that I viewed it as a must, that this was part of my mission in helping people accept their own individuality, their own voice, whether they’re singers or not. It’s about being who you are and that voice is who you are. It’s one and the same.

Marion: Oh, you had to do it. I so get that. And when you said that, I was suddenly hurled back about 30 years, 35 years. And the first time I heard a counter tenor, and it was a good counter tenor, and I got a full body goosebumps. And the people I was with were not as affected by it. I had an experience with it. And then I read an interview with that counter tenor in opera news. And there within this interview, he admitted that he had to go into therapy to get to his counter tenor voice. And I’m going to get wrong with what that is. It’s a very high voice. Let me say that. And this is a person whose gender is male. And he talked about how in therapy, he admitted to his therapist that he was desperately trying to stay a tenor, be a tenor, because there was this other voice, but it frightened him and it wasn’t all that acceptable.

But then he became this counter tenor and fully embraced that. What I think I was responding to was his liberation. There was something that happened to me when I heard that voice. And when I read the interview, it just integrated. I said, “That’s what I was responding to, his true self.” How bizarre of me to have a response like that? But how wonderful for you to offer that? Because I think that’s it with art. You have to do it. In fact, writers have to react. And I say this every single day to writers I work with. You must be willing and able to react. If you read something in the news and it makes you crazy, write an Op-ed. If you read something, if you feel something strongly about the continuum of your own self and how it delivers your voice, get it down.

But all too often, we have this other response. We say, “Oh, is it a good idea? Is it going to work?” long before we let ourselves roll it out and see what we really think. So, as you rolled out this book and examined what you really think, I assume you had to, well, first of all, you probably learned a lot about what you really think. The idea wasn’t maybe completely full blown when you started to write this book, but just give me the chicken and egg here. Did you know what you knew or did you learn a lot more or? You say you had to do it, but just…

Carolyn: I love that question.

Marion: Yeah.

Carolyn: Did you know what you knew? I love that it. It happened in a funny way, too, not dissimilar to the Sneakers and Lace story, where I was speaking with a friend. We were on the train in New York city. And I said, “When I’m 80 years old, I’m going to write this book about singing. And it’s going to divide into sections that in order to be a singer, you have to be a warrior, a scientist, a detective, and a spiritual master.” And I just said it off the cuff, just like that. And she said, “That’s a really good idea.” And I said, “Yeah, I’m going to do that when I’m old and I’m going to write a book on singing.”

And then one thing led to the next, and I ended up writing it obviously much sooner than when I was 80, because I’m not 80 yet. I think that I always felt that I wanted people who sing or who wanted to sing to be able to do it and to do it freely and I had this whole idea. And you talked about therapy for that counter tenor. But singing is like therapy. And a lot of the time, people find that either when they go into therapy and they become better singers because they’ve removed a lot of emotional blocks which impair their breathing or just make them too self-conscious. And then you talked about this overly intellectual approach to writing where you’re always planning something out or you’re drawing a map of the story.

And sometimes we have to follow that little intuitive voice. And I say little, because sometimes it’s very quiet and we can’t hear it that well. But to get quiet and to be in that, they call it that pre-conscious state where you’re awake but you’re not awake, and you’re in this dreamy state where you just let yourself go without any kind of constraint. And that’s super important. And did I know what I knew? I think I did to a point. But I forget who said this, but you don’t explain a poem. You interpret it’s meaning. And I think for me, writing that book was almost like writing a poem, even though it’s kind of a how-to in that I make recommendations on how one can better their singing. But it’s more encouragement on letting yourself be who you are.

And so many revelations have happened in my studio where students have come in and then had some memory or something, like we’re trying to work out a block. Then I say, “Well, look, your jaw is really tight and we got to work on that a little bit because I’m not really sure why it’s so tight.” And then there’s lots of tears and things happen. And it’s unbelievable how much emotional stuff comes out when we’re singing, because singing is not rational. Singing is that thing that happens when it’s just… It’s not rational. It’s not from that front part of your mind. It’s something much deeper.

Marion: Oh, that’s just so helpful. You touched on the idea that it comes from the subconscious or pre-conscious place, the idea that it’s not rational. The acceptance of these truths is so important to be creative that I interviewed my sister of all people, who’s the garden columnist to the New York Times, and we were talking about the different forms of writing whether it be the miniatures, or the personal essay, or the Op-ed or the book. She’s written all of them. But she distinguished the personal essay as a place that comes from the pre-conscious or subconscious that you just get this feeling about something and you start to think about it. It’s not like an assignment. It’s not like the ones you get for your gardening column that has to be precise to the season and the things we’re thinking about, but that there is this unknown place. So let’s talk about who’s informing that. I mean, you’re a singer, composer, writer, performer, wife, mother, daughter, teacher. It sounds like not one of these is the dominant creative. It sounds like they all inform each other. But how would you put it?

Carolyn: I think that’s tough. I think it’s fluid in that there are different ones that are dominant in different times in my life. I think music is a constant. I have to be involved in music at some level in order to be really fulfilled. But at the same time, I also find that I really need to be an educator and be working with children as well to be truly fulfilled. And I need to always be making something, so whether it’s a song or whether I’m writing a book.

I went through a phase when I was raising my son that I really love to cook. So even if I’m making a meal, I think that this creative energy, this must of I have to make something, I need to create something, is just a constant. The creative energy, the desire to make something all the time is really what drives me. And if it isn’t music then, for instance, now with my company, I’m making interactive activities that teach and instruct for children to use online. And that’s really important for me to do right now. So I think it’s just this desire to create. So the creativity is the mainstay, the desire to make something. And then what I’m actually making seems to be able to change, and that is what’s fluid.

Marion: So you didn’t appear to get the memo, that memo that women of our generation got about sticking to one lane if you even dared to venture into the life of a creative. You be a singer or you be a writer. And if you’re a writer, you choose a genre and you stay there. In other words, you be one single thing. So what did you do with that memo when it was sent to you?

Carolyn: I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t get the memo.

Marion: Lucky you.

Carolyn: Because I don’t know how to do that, honestly. I’m very fascinated by so many different things. And it’s true. I think it makes it very difficult, I think, for the people in my life to define me, and my music is not dissimilar. I think it’s very hard to define my music except with one word, which is it’s tends to be very melodic. But other than that, I think it’s just very hard to define what I do. So I love to learn and things interest me. And when they really interest me, I don’t want to say I get obsessive, but it’s close. And I really dive in and I want to know everything about that particular thing. And then sometimes then I want to create within that world, whatever that world might be.

But for me, writing has always been a mainstay. Ever since I was a kid, I was writing stories and making things up. And then in high school, I got really into writing poetry, and college writing poetry, which then moved me into writing lyrics because I started putting the poetry to melody. And then I realized that poetry and music were separate things and that lyrics had a whole other life, and that lyrics were less descriptive. You didn’t need the descriptors because you had the music to describe the words. And so I got really into writing songs which I did for many years. I still do it. And then I had my son. And then I started writing kids songs for my son and for students.

I feel like I need to get this in here even though it’s not necessarily part of the question, is that different times in your life call on you to do different things. And I’m fairly responsive that way. And when my son was very little, I was always writing songs but the songs then became songs that were more integrated in our life. They became lullabies or they became funny songs to entertain him. And I didn’t stop doing the other, but I had waited a long time to have a child and I really wanted to make him a priority in my life. So the music served the context which was I’m a mom now so I’m going to do it this way. And then as soon as he was school-age and doing other things, it changed again. So I think I tend to be fluid and responsive in the sense that when the context shifts and the needs shift or call on me to do something else, I’m fairly flexible that way.

Marion: And it’s fascinating. I mean, you’ve got these two children’s books. In 2015, you published a children’s book called Welcome to the Symphony, An Exploration of the Orchestra using Beethoven’s Symphony Number Five. It’s musical, it’s interactive, it teaches children and their families about the orchestra and classical music. And it’s wonderfully illustrated by James Williamson, published by Workman Press. And you also wrote Welcome to Jazz. This one is illustrated by Jessica Gibson in which you harness the great song “When the Saints Go Marching In” to explain jazz to children. And these are beautiful books. They’re interactive. They literally make music. And I played with them all the time when I got them and kept pressing the buttons and learning.

There’s this gorgeous introduction in the jazz book that says that we’re actually promised that the key concepts of jazz and understanding them will help kids develop into caring, independent and open-minded human beings. So this totally transfixed me. And it’s very subversive, if that’s the right word. A piece of art moves us along in our outlook replacing some of the stuff we previously thought. That’s what subversion is. So all through this conversation of your books and your work, I think we’ve been talking about being subversive a little bit, like turning things into things that work along our continuum of beliefs. Do you think that your work is subversive?

Carolyn: I have never thought of it in those terms, in that light, no. I’ve never really thought about it. But it makes total sense to me that it might be. Because I think it goes hand in hand with wanting to be an individual and not wanting to simply follow because that’s what we’re all here for. I really do believe that, that we are here to be ourselves to offer up a point of view, a way of being, that is different and yet somehow supportive, and encouraging, and instructive to another human. I really believe that’s what we’re here for. So it makes sense that it would be, although I don’t think I ever set out to be subversive, but I think I have always been wanting to be highly individualistic.

In fact, when I went to the School of Performing Arts after having gone to two public schools in Queens, it actually was a huge relief to me to be at performing arts with other people who were really interested in making art and being performers. Because they were individuals already, even at their young ages, that they were all very, very their own person. And it was okay to be that way and it wasn’t okay to be that way. There’s a lot of peer pressure. And my middle school, and middle school’s not good for anyone I know, but I think it’s about saying, “It’s okay. This is what I think and I’m going to share this with you. And I want you to listen, but you don’t have to listen and follow. You can take what’s good for you and leave the rest, and I’ll listen to you and maybe incorporate some of your ideas too.”

And that’s where music comes in because that’s what great musicians do. They listen. When I teach music and especially in an ensemble setting, the mark of really good musicians is always their ability to listen and respond. And I am married to an actor, a professional Broadway actor, who says the same thing about acting. So I think it’s a metaphor, just for life in general, that if we can listen to each other, we can respond to each other. We can offer our own ideas. We can incorporate other ideas and then somehow create this beautiful, again, tapestry of sound, of words, of voice, of living together that we’re not supposed to all be the same.

Marion: Yeah, there you go, yeah. That’s beautiful. And as we wrap this up, I just have to completely default to a total fan girl status here and say you’ve written over 75 songs for young students. Schools and organizations around the country use them as integral components to music curriculums in elementary and middle school. And you’re probably very accustomed to hearing your work performed. But your songs have been performed on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial. And I just need to know what it’s like to hear a piece you’ve written performed there, in the case of the Lincoln Memorial, where the great Marion Anderson sang to our nation in 1939. This is a sacred venue. What was that like?

Carolyn: Well, it was pretty amazing. I do have to say as someone, my father is an American history teacher. It was an amazing experience, especially to hear children’s voices saying words that I extracted from Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, then to hear children from all different walks of life, from all different public schools down in Washington, DC and New York City, come together and sing I Have A Dream there, and also at the new Dr. King Memorial. It was pretty amazing. I don’t know if I have words for it but it was very humbling. And I felt really, really grateful to have my work performed, but also performed by children.

And I don’t remember who said this, and I’m not a particularly religious person. I like to think of myself as spiritual, but not religious. And someone said, “When you sing something, you say it twice.” I’m getting this quote wrong. But it’s much more powerful when it is said in song. And to hear children sing that peace of mind, which by the way, after I write something, I don’t know if this happens to you Marion, but after I write something, it almost feels like it’s not mine anymore. So to hear this song, which I knew that I composed, but to hear the children sing it and in that venue was beautiful but somehow unreal, because it had come through me, but it didn’t necessarily feel like mine. I didn’t feel like it was mine. I felt like it just belonged there.

Marion: Oh, it’s out there in the world. Oh, well, I just can’t. Thank you enough for coming along today and helping us understand this creative life. It’s really a joy to know you and to talk with you here. Thank you so much, Carolyn. And I can’t wait to see what you write next.

Carolyn: Oh, thank you, Marion. And it was just lovely to talk to you and I really appreciate you having me here.

Marion: You’re welcome. The writer is Carolyn Sloan. She can be reached at carolyn sloan dot com. She’s the author of three books, Finding Your Voice, A Practical and Spiritual Guide to Singing and Living, Welcome to the Symphony, An Exploration of the Orchestra Using Beethoven Symphony Number Five, and Welcome to Jazz, A Swing Along Celebration of America’s Music. Her books are available everywhere books are sold.

I’m Marion Roach Smith and you’ve been listening to QWERTY. QWERTY is produced by Overit Studios in Albany, New York. Reach them at overit studios dot com. Our producer is Adam Clairmont. Our assistant is Lorna Bailey. Want more on the art and work of writing? Visit marion roach dot com where I offer online classes in how to write memoir. And thanks for listening. Don’t forget to follow QWERTY wherever you get your podcasts and listen to it wherever you go. And if you like what you hear, please leave us a starred review. It helps others to find their way to their writing lives.