By Sandy Miller
Piano virtuoso Jill Timmons has performed to rave reviews in the US and abroad for decades. She is an artist/teacher affiliate with Portland’s Classic Pianos and a Linfield University professor emerita. Through her business, Artsmentor, LLC, she also works with other musicians who are navigating change in their lives and careers.
A fourth-generation Oregonian, Timmons has fond early memories of time spent on her grandmother’s farm in Boring, learning to cook, reading great literature and playing the upright piano. She has long loved the Oregon coast, spending childhood summers in Manzanita in a bare-bones cabin with no phone and a wood stove for cooking. Along with her father, she was rescued at sea by the US Coast Guard a mile offshore when shock waves from the 9.2 magnitude 1964 Alaska earthquake capsized their boat. “I have lived all over the US and in France,” she says, “but Oregon has been my heart place.” She and her husband now reside in Netarts.
In Variations on Life After 50: A Field Guide to Harnessing the Power of Creativity, Purpose, and Legacy in Midlife, she addresses her fellow Baby Boomers, who are beginning to surf their “Third Wave”—that phase at midlife when they answer their soul’s calling for greater authenticity, while also facing life’s inevitable changes and losses. This book offers a strategic field guide on how to ignite the power of creativity to meet both the challenges and potentialities of life in the Third Wave.
Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations (BWV 988) is a musical composition originally written for the harpsichord in 1741. The work consists of an aria followed by 30 variations—some contemplative, some lively. The last variation, called a quodlibet (Latin for “whatever you please”), is a playful reprise of the aria mixed with parts of two popular German folk songs from the period.
Inspired by performing the Goldberg Variations, Timmons in her new book has crafted 30 short variations with titles like “Creativity and Soul,” “Gratitude,” “Preparing the Ground for Your Creative Calling” and “Life and Death.” Each variation is introduced by a thought-provoking quotation. For example, from transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson, “It is not length of life, but depth of life.” Or from Chinese philosopher Lao Tsu, “The path into the light seems dark.” Each variation ends with “Here’s an Idea!” which serves as a prompt for a short journaling activity that readers may find useful in sparking their own creativity.
Liminal space, a key concept, is “betwixt and between”—the borderland between loss or change and a new life that has been informed by that experience. A useful tool for traversing liminal space, she suggests, is the Native American medicine wheel, a circle divided in quarters by the four cardinal directions. This wheel can provide an actionable template to ignite one’s creativity. Beginning at the
North, the task is to show up and to enter with an open, “beginner’s” mind in search of a creative vision-plan, something that is fueled by curiosity, passion and a sense of inevitability—something that one cannot not do.
When this right action has been identified, movement proceeds clockwise to the East to activate the plan through creativity, including time management. Many Third Wavers have significant life commitments to family, community and work, so this is an essential step—but momentum and energy follow from having found this creative purpose. In the South of the Wheel the creative product is realized, and in the West it evolves into service, wisdom, gratitude and abundance—all of which reflect one’s legacy. As we harness our own creative spirit, again revisiting the Medicine Wheel, we become Life Artists.
In her own quodlibet, Timmons invokes many notes from the previous 29 variations in her book, while reflecting on two creative paths that have been key for her own journey: food and music. Like the Bach Goldberg quodlibet’s folk songs, they suggest joy, delight and abundance.
Along with compelling studies on aging and the distilled wisdom of both poets and pundits, Variations on Life After 50 is richly peppered with personal anecdotes and inspiring stories of people who embraced their own Third Wave with resilience, creativity and joy in the face of loss and change. The book speaks both to readers still working at a “job” and those who are ready to craft new ways of living and thriving. Advice from Timmons: retire the word “retirement,” and never stop moving toward your soul’s desire. Third Wave Life Artists have much to offer their community and the world.
The book will be released on August 4 and can be purchased directly from Simon & Schuster (simonandschuster.com/authors/Jill-Timmons/252816907), locally at Powell’s Books and through other national and online retailers.
