Dear Lostin--I've been online long enough to know about trolls of various kinds.
I am sorry to see that it is apparently so easy to assume in this of all venues that if you play the piano at 80 you must be lying.
My primary interest in playing has nothing to do with my age--it has everything to do with the music, and also, to a large extent, to the wish to try to regain some of the ground I lost by being a very confused teenager on her way to becoming a flaming alcoholic.
About my poor ravaged bod--yes, there's certainly that. I have lots of osteoarthritis. I have fake knees, hardware in my neck and eight fused vertebrae, a deformed right thumb (!) and I have to be sure to do my yoga side planks if I want to be able to sit at the piano long enough to practice decently without being derailed by acute pain in my scoliosis.
As for inspiration . . . I'm more interested in inspiring people with wonderful music than with the fact that I'm a dog standing on its hind legs, er, I mean, an 80-year-old playing piano.
I think one thing that goes on is that most people are NOT yet 80, and have the classic stereotypical views that old people are deaf, blind, and in the last throes of dementia. Just. Not. So. Maybe if we get all that cleared up, I'll be able to post here occasionally without being viewed either as a fake or a freak.
Lostin--good points, and I am happy to have them, thanks! All in all, this has been a useful exchange, in more than one way. I am once more pleased to know that I don't speak like a fuddy-duddy, and I'm taking your suggestions to give a little bio material to my audiences. (I already have a bio that normally gets printed out on the back of my head shot or program by the, mostly, activity directors in the upscale senior residences I've been playing to. I'll think more about verbalizing some of that when I'm performing. I suppose the best way to do it would be in some (please, not too long, I drone on forever by nature) introductory remarks before I begin to play.Also, thinking about it, I owe a thank-you to Derek for being so convinced I must be younger than I am. Heh.
Oh, ferchrissakes, Derek, get a grip. I think I may be on Linked In, but I never use it. Jesus, I don't know why I should have any interest in supporting this craziness, but try me on Facebook. Better yet, go have a look at my website, http:www.wordsintoprint.com, left over from my years as a text editor. BTW, there are, these days, apparently four Kate Gilpins in the world: me, somebody farther east in the U.S., somebody in, is it New Zealand or Australia, and maybe somebody in the UK. Can't recall. Don't TELL me what an 80-year-old thinks or sounds like. It's ludicrous. You should be apologizing, not persisting.
Too little, too late. And do tell us more about how humble you are.
No offense, but no 80 year old would say "heh." They wouldn't be spending enough time on internet forums to realize this is a common word to use. That said, I did find a kate gilpin who plays classical piano who lives in CA who appears as though they may be 80, which is why I'm reluctant to declare with 100% confidence that you are not who you say you are. But a troll could protect themselves by finding a real person first, it occurred to me.I do wish I knew the actual truth ....
This is quite a pitiful excuse for an apology! We have one other forum member here who sees a troll in almost every new post; you can join that conspiracy theory club but I just wish you would keep quiet when you come up with these wild assertions so you do not run off a new forum member who might have made a contribution to this forum. Kate is one of those that I would've appreciated having around here.
What should I, in my right mind, be imagining as my pianistic future, assuming I'm around for at least the next ten years?
Topic: Really really late-blooming concertizing?? 