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Spiritual Searchings

Craving a taste of Europe, my television producer friend Josanne and I took time away from our various projects to fly to Rome. From there we caught the train to Orvieto, where an acquaintance of hers had rented a large hillside villa. The cloudy weather was not ideal, but we met up with a friend from California, drove to Padua for the day, and soaked up the landscape as much as we could, treating ourselves to gelato and, as girlfriends always do, commiserating about men!

Hadn’t we both always fantasized about a little villa in Italy? Where were the romantic men of our dreams hiding? Not in Canada, we had concluded. In our mutual experience, post-divorce dating was one disappointment after another. Why had she moved from Vancouver to Palm Springs and almost relocated to Corsica? And why had I moved from Toronto to California to Miami and then to Connecticut? What were we both searching for? Why were we both driven to work so hard when our contemporaries were starting to retire? We were both liberated women of the sixties who had chosen to “do our thing,” but we now found ourselves not completely satisfied with having to work so hard and with living alone. It seemed that so many women of our generation were all in the exact same situation, and I felt grateful that at least I still had the guitar to keep me company.

Upon my return to New Canaan, I decided to drive up to Lenox, Massachusetts, to spend a few days at a spiritual retreat run by philosopher Andrew Cohen. It necessitated a lengthy drive, during which I took a few wrong turns. I despaired when, after hours behind the wheel, my navigation system guided me half-way up a snowy mountain and announced, “You have arrived at your destination.”

Having only learned to drive at age thirty-four and not possessed of a natural sense of direction like my sister, I was always afraid of getting lost, and the rapidly fading light and falling snowflakes brought me close to tears. I had come on a spiritual trip, but this was certainly not a good way to begin it. I tried to keep calm and after a few more mistakes, ignoring the useless navigation voice, I finally arrived, exhausted and swearing to myself to never again undertake this type of solo drive through unfamiliar territory.

Andrew Cohen had founded Enlightenment Magazine and written many books on spirituality that had resonated with my father, so I thought the retreat might be a beneficial life experience. It was an interesting time, if not terribly enjoyable. I had always loved Wayne Dyer and I had delved into a few books by Ken Wilber and Eckhart Tolle, but in spite of Andrew Cohen’s obviously brilliant mind, I found him a bit abrasive and did not connect well with his persona. It was not altogether surprising to learn that in 2013 his “Utopian experiment” had imploded and he had humbly issued an apology to his followers for his ego-driven behaviour. In any case, I knew that spiritual trips were not for me after all though I rationalized that the long meditations and lectures must surely have done me some good.

When I returned home, I found that my Connecticut and New York friends had all taken off for sunnier climes in the Caribbean or on ski trips, so on Christmas Day I found myself alone in my snowy New England house, where my guitar and I contentedly spent the day composing a new piece of music, a patriotic children’s song called “We’ll Sing a Song for Canada.” A few years later, when I penned “Alone on Christmas Day,” it was this solitary day that provided me with some of the inspiration; although, there was no man in my life who “chose to go” as my lyrics express in the chorus.

In February of 2010 when the winter chills were becoming unbearable, I decided to spend a couple of weeks in Florida learning about nutrition while staying at the Hippocrates Health Institute, which was founded by a remarkable couple, Brian and Anna Maria Clement. The previous year, in the company of a friend from Toronto, I had spent a few days on the beautiful island of St. John, where the aquamarine Caribbean waters and white sand beaches were a welcome escape from the Connecticut winter, but this visit to Florida was to be a learning experience and not exactly a holiday.

At Hippocrates, the food was completely raw, vegan, and all organic. Its menu emphasized fresh sprouts, some of the best enzyme- and vitamin-packed food a human being can eat. I found it amazing how delicious their buffets were and how energized such a diet made me feel! I still try, as much as possible, to adhere to their principles, minus the wheat grass juice, which personally I dislike. But whenever I travel it becomes virtually impossible to resist less than perfect food … and what is life without gelato!

At Hippocrates I hung out in the saltwater pools with Broadway star Tommy Tune, and we quickly alternated dips in the icy pool and the steaming hot tub. Apparently I had missed Anthony Hopkins by a week. At the institute’s farewell dinner I bravely plucked up the nerve to sing “Little Seabird” alone and without Srdjan to accompany me, and to this day my framed photo is hanging on the wall in the HHI gift shop.

Srdjan and I continued to rehearse our repertoire, and a few months later we were hired to perform at a private event in Las Vegas where we were treated royally. At a March of Dimes fundraiser in Toronto, Srdjan and I entertained the packed ballroom after I had given a lecture about disability, focal dystonia, positive attitudes, and reinvention. We played a couple of concerts in Ontario and participated in a large international guitar festival in the unlikely town in northern Quebec called Rouyn-Noranda. Each time it seemed to me an absolute miracle that I was actually singing onstage. After all our struggles Srdjan and I were finally on our way as a duo, and we both eagerly looked forward to a fall tour that was being put together.

• • •

As in Miami, I had made several new friends in New York and even shared the odd dinner or lecture with an occasional would-be suitor. But I met nobody I had any desire to date. Making music with Srdjan and Peter still topped my list of most satisfying activities.

During my years living so close to New York, I often attended classical music concerts and the opera, and my good friend from Los Angeles Jamie Rigler escorted me to the Met Gala. Jamie and his uncle Lloyd Rigler, who had founded the Classic Arts Showcase, were two of the important sponsors, so we were treated like VIPs. We chatted with Plácido Domingo and his wife, Marta, reminiscing about the magical times in Acapulco with our dear mutual friends, the Baron and Baroness di Portanova — how fortunate we had been to have enjoyed so many incredible times at their splendiferous home, Arabesque. By chance, at intermission, I ran into my former fiancé, Joel Bell, who introduced me to his wife, Marife Hernandez. I met the talented Willem Dafoe, and also Jeremy Irons, who was all smiles and compliments about my updo hairstyle. He invited me to attend his new play, but sadly I was flying up to Canada that week. What potential friendship with an amazing actor had been lost! I kicked myself for not at least handing him my business card.

I certainly enjoyed New Canaan’s proximity to New York; however, there were also some serious downsides. The years I spent in Connecticut happened to produce especially tough winters. One particularly fierce ice storm felled trees throughout the state and left my driveway blocked by a huge oak that I actually witnessed come crashing down. Amazingly, mine was the only house in my area to retain electricity. I volunteered to look after my neighbour’s rabbit and cat while they escaped to relatives whose houses had power.

Life in New England was proving worse than Miami, with its hurricanes, which at least gave one some warning and time to escape! Shovelling driveways, constantly trudging back and forth to the village with groceries, and driving the snowy roads into Westport and Norwalk was getting old. Even shivering on the train platforms to commute to New York for some cultural experiences was becoming tiresome, and I observed that the commuters usually had grim, unsmiling faces. Was this really where I wanted to spend my life?

The prevalence of Lyme disease in Connecticut made me uneasy, as even petting an animal, sitting on the grass, or brushing against shrubs could risk a tick bite. Ticks cling to the hides of deer, those lovely creatures that roamed freely into my garden! Half the people I met had at some time or another been infected with this complex and not easily diagnosed disease that causes pain in the muscles and joints and can eventually enter the brain.

All of these concerns weighed heavily upon me. Should I move to a kinder, gentler, spiritual place such as Sedona, Big Sur, the peaceful Napa Valley, or return to L.A. or Toronto, or perhaps relocate to the Big Apple, as friends there were always suggesting? Something told me I would not thrive in the frenzied, abrasive metropolis of Manhattan, in spite of its bountiful cultural offerings. After spending a lonely week in a friend’s empty Upper East Side apartment, where I taught myself to play guitar using a fingerpick, I made up my mind that New York would always suit me best in small doses compared to taking up residence there.

My time in New Canaan had served its intended purpose and allowed me to experience life in one of the most charming New England towns, as well as spend time in New York. I knew I would miss my girlfriend Joanne and the proximity to Srdjan, but after three years and the completion of both albums I once again began to crave new scenery, warmer weather, and a different life.

In 2010 months of agonizing about my next move — and how it would affect the new duo I had formed — led me to give Southern California one more chance, even though I knew the logistics would prove challenging. My friend Olivia Newton-John suggested Santa Monica, which I had always enjoyed during my Beverly Hills years, so my search began for a house that was within walking distance of the beach. If California were going to fall into the ocean, I might as well be there to enjoy its pleasures while it lasted! After a month of indecision and insomnia, I flew out and decided to lease a white two-bedroom Spanish-style house just off Montana Avenue, with arched hallways and a huge guava tree in the back garden.

Next came the massive task of packing up my entire household into boxes. This moving business had become all too familiar and, even now, whenever I hear the rasping sound of adhesive tape, memories of my frantic days of moving house come flooding back. Stan, the guitarist who had set up my YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook sites, generously came to help parcel up boxes. My bookkeeper, Valerie, a sweet-natured girl who lived behind me with her young family, gave me a hand from time to time and, along with my friend Pam, helped organize a “tag sale.” It was amazing how much stuff I had accumulated over three years of living in New England!

Finally I was packed and ready for the big move. To give the moving truck and flatbed for my Lexus time to make it to California, Joanne invited me to stay a couple of days in her guest house and we took some nostalgic walks together around New Canaan. Not wanting to overstay my welcome, I spent an additional two days with David, the friend who had previously lent me his empty New York apartment, in his home on a private island off Norwalk, and a day with my friends Mark and Joan in their Westport house. The daffodil days of my white-picket-fenced Connecticut chapter had come to an end, but my time there had produced several new friendships and two beautiful albums.

• • •

At the same time as I was preparing to leave New Canaan, I decided to fly back to Toronto to be with my father. He had been having some health challenges, and in April of 2010 his surgeons operated after detecting cancer in his bladder. Since his youth my dad had developed a calm spiritual philosophy, which always enabled him to accept whatever fate dished out to him. He was the envy of many people, including those with whom he had been volunteering as an art therapist and self-appointed philosopher at the Dorothy Ley Hospice. Now that cancer had entered his own life, my father had become an ideal patient and very appreciative of the wonderful health care he was given in the Toronto hospitals.

My mother had broken her hip twenty years earlier, but together they still enjoyed the weekly rituals of Saturday night movies, parties at Ann and Eli Kassner’s house, and daily routines: tea at eight a.m., ten a.m., one p.m., and four p.m., and coffee and hot cross buns at eleven a.m. My dad, with his dry British wit, calculated that he had served my mother forty-four thousand cups of tea! And I thought it was only T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock who measured out his life in coffee spoons!

I remembered the dozens of times my father had driven down to Mexico and all the camping holidays he had taken us on as kids in our trusty VW bus — to Calgary, Virginia, Myrtle Beach, New York, the Adirondacks, Yellowstone Park, Texas, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, the Rocky Mountains, San Miguel de Allende, Oaxaca, San Blas, Veracruz, and Acapulco. As a family, we had logged an incredible number of miles together!

My animal-loving sister, Vivien, ran a dental clinic she built thirty years ago in Cambridge, Ontario, and her son, Colin, had been travelling the world and was now teaching school at a private college in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Damien, for reasons known only to himself, had rejected our family five years ago in 2005, and refused all attempts at communication from any of us, to my parents’ despair. His cruelty to such loving and tolerant parents, who had let him live on and off at their home until he was in his forties, was something that Vivien and I found impossible to forgive.

We had always considered Damien the creative genius of the family, but he developed mental illness in his early twenties and had frequently derailed my parents’ happy life. After some very difficult years he did finally get things under control and has held a steady job in Toronto. He married a lovely Greek-Canadian girl, and I hear they still share a busy, happy lifestyle, filled with frequent international holidays. Losing a brother was terribly sad for Vivien and me, but for my parents losing their only son was tragic.

• • •

After what seemed like interminable unpacking and shopping, dealing with tedious paperwork involving my lease and the move from one state to another, fighting unbelievably high health insurance, and changing driving licences, I started to enjoy biking down to the Santa Monica pier and walking along the beachside paths. After arriving in L.A. and staying a few days with my close friend Devers Branden, my very first mission had been to visit Jack and my cherished cat, Muffin. I met Jack’s charming new wife, Maggy, a petite, bouncy blonde, and I was delighted to sense how absolutely perfect they were for each other. Jack had searched for five long years and now had a wonderful life companion who had grown to love him and his family and, of course, our “pussycat boy,” Muffin. Dervin, the houseman who was still working there, was beaming all over at the sight of his former “ma’am” and hurried off to the kitchen to make me his best Sri Lankan tea!

We enjoyed a pleasant visit, and when I left, both Jack and Maggy promised to stay in touch. And so it was that I became part of the Simons’ extended family. Maggy had a powerful natural singing voice, which at this point she had only used for amateur and charity performances, and one afternoon she offered me a private concert at the home of her piano accompanist. I sat beside Jack listening to his new wife belt out Broadway songs, marvelling at her talent, and realizing that even though she now had my husband, my house, the diamond wedding ring that I had returned to him, my housekeeper, my cat, and even my phone number, I felt great joy that they had found each other. I knew they were soulmates! The guilt of having left Jack had at last been lifted off my shoulders, and Maggy and I were to become great friends. Although she had never before sung professionally, she started to make biannual appearances at the Catalina Jazz Club in L.A. and has since developed a devoted following and huge online following. Little did Jack realize he was marrying another performer!

Jack’s son, Ken, and Ken’s Canadian wife, Marinette, and daughter, Nathalie, welcomed me back as family. It felt warm and cozy, just like old times, except that I was living alone, and it was often a struggle for me. At times I questioned my constant moving, wondered if perhaps I had made a mistake, sacrificing my secure, glamorous life to pursue music, but at other times I knew that I had to persist and use my music to give something beautiful to the world. In L.A. the traffic seemed more impossible than ever, and that year it was cold and damp in Santa Monica, where the “June gloom” hung around for months. I finally understood that Frank Sinatra song, “The Lady is a Tramp” and its description of California. Even my sister, who came to visit for two weeks in August, complained that she had to wear sweaters every single day.

I made new friends easily, and my neighbour Nancy, a pediatric neurologist, and I took walks each night to the beach or attended films with her singer-songwriter boyfriend. My Italian friend from years ago, the beautiful actress Mara New, and our mutual girlfriend, singer Barbi Benton, Hugh Hefner’s former wife, reconnected through the milongas we went to each Friday night to dance tango nuevo.

One of the dancers, a talented, long-haired sculptor whose works were in many important American collections, fancied himself a Sir Lancelot and saw me as Lady Guinevere. He invited me to spend an afternoon with him riding his horses in the flower-filled fields of the San Fernando Valley. Life was still offering me delightful experiences, but in spite of his eager pursuit of romance, it was not to be.

I saw my genius composer friend Hershey Felder, now the husband of Kim Campbell, a former Canadian prime minister who had shocked Canada by choosing a man twenty-one years her junior. Jack and I had been there in September of 1996 at the Canadian consular residence the night they first laid eyes on each other, and even though my husband laughed it off and told me I was crazy, I knew we were witnessing Cupid’s crafty wiles. The next thing we heard was that Kim had hired Hershey to be her chef at the residence since the young man happened to be a master in the kitchen. Who would have guessed that our first woman prime minister had an inner “cougar,” a term my writer girlfriend Valerie Gibson had first popularized in the eighties.

Today they are still together. Hershey has developed an amazing musical and theatrical career, and he and Kim divide their time between their château in France and a home in New York. He told me that the Israeli Guitar Concerto he started to write for me in the late nineties but never finished, has now apparently morphed into a work for piano and orchestra. As well as composing at the piano, Hershey Felder created and still performs his unique one-man shows, during which he impersonates various renowned composers. In each production he acts out and narrates the story of a composer’s life accompanied by their music. The first of his many brilliant shows I saw was based on George Gershwin, with subsequent ones based on Beethoven, Leonard Bernstein, Liszt, and Irving Berlin. I heard that this talented man has given over four thousand performances. No wonder he and Kim were instant soulmates — they both have boundless energy!

On the subject of “cougars,” I also became friends with Sylvester Stallone’s colourful mother, Jacqueline, who had married a surgeon, Stephen Levine, who is Sly’s age. I attended a few events with her, sometimes in the company of her other singer-songwriter son, Frank. Our friendship endures today, and at ninety-five Jacqueline is my role model for how to maintain a lively existence and never stop learning new things. Between her astrology, French, tap dancing, and piano lessons, this woman is a marvel!

Another friend, Lili Fournier, whom I knew from Toronto, invited me to a fundraiser at the elegant Spanish-style home of Antonio Banderas. There we were joined by Shirley MacLaine and Deepak Chopra, among others. I seated myself on Antonio’s patio and held his fluffy cat on my lap, but alas, Antonio, my dashing heartthrob hero of Desperado and Zorro, whom I had once conversed with in Spanish at a Beverly Hills fundraiser, was nowhere to be found. His wife, Melanie Griffith, chain smoking and looking terribly thin, remembered me from Acapulco and explained that her husband was out of town.

• • •

My time in California was not just a whirl of social events. Every day I diligently sang and played my guitar as, although not as tough as classical pieces, memorizing all my lyrics and songs required for a full program was still a challenge. In the fall Srdjan and I had a successful nine-city tour of Ontario, enjoying our new repertoire, the familiar visits to my parents’ Etobicoke home, and the warmth of our Canadian audiences. I was gaining confidence as a singer and kept thinking how much more fun I seemed to be having onstage compared to when I was a soloist. Of course I had enjoyed immensely the years as a purely classical player, but this was a lovely change.

Srdjan had been a godsend, helping me launch this exciting new chapter in my career, as had Peter Bond, who produced the albums and the tracks we often sang along to. They met each other for the first time at my parents’ house and we shared humorous stories over cups of tea and sips of my mother’s favourite sherry.

Regretfully, I knew that my time playing with Srdjan was coming to an end. He had a full-time job in New Jersey and had hinted that he was not always going to be free to come to California for rehearsals even though I had always paid for his expenses. I felt bad for him; I had been very aware that my moving west could jeopardize our performances. We had a short run of dates already booked, but I thought I had better make a back-up plan and try to find an alternative duo partner in Los Angeles, the city that I presumed would now be my forever home.

Unfortunately, after months of searching the huge metropolis it proved almost impossible to find a classical guitarist who also sang! I started to learn a few folksy songs, such as Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne” and Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” with a former hippie, James McVay, who lived up in the hills of Topanga Canyon. We enjoyed making music together, but his voice lacked the husky richness of Srdjan’s, and James was not really a classical player. Inspired by my idea of perhaps forming a Peter, Paul and Mary–style trio with Jim, Srdjan agreed to fly out to L.A. and we all became excited hearing how wonderful our three blended voices and guitars sounded together. Peter, Paul and Mary had ceased to be since Mary’s illness, and there was no end of beautiful songs of theirs to arrange. But despite my efforts to find a good U.S. manager or agent to represent us, I failed to make the right connections. I also knew that the logistics of dealing with three schedules and geographical locations were going to prove an insurmountable challenge. Looking back, I realize just how impractical an idea this had been from the start. Our lovely folk trio, just like Alexandre Lagoya’s envisioned guitar quartet of the seventies, died an untimely death.

Finding a good booking agent and duo partner was proving impossible, and I was once again feeling unsettled. I concluded that I needed to find a new home. My inner conflicts about where to live began to gnaw away in both my waking and sleeping hours. The insomnia, which had plagued me for years, grew worse, and my family doctor prescribed the sleeping pill Ativan, to which I inevitably became addicted. After foolishly deciding to quit it cold turkey, sleep eluded me for four days, and I became agitated, weepy, and paranoid, convinced that I was about to lose my mind! I sobbed to my parents that I needed to come home. Something was definitely wrong with me. Only resuming Ativan and gradually reducing the dosage kept me sane and allowed me to wean myself off the drug. My family doctor confessed to me that he too was addicted to this particular sleeping pill, also known as Lorazepam, and had been trying unsuccessfully to quit.

What was I doing battling Los Angeles’ grid lock traffic, paying a fortune in rent, and living so far away from my family? After all my agonizing in Connecticut a year earlier, had I made a huge mistake in returning to this perplexing City of Angels?