A seasoned psychotherapist listens very quietly to words said in
utmost privacy. A professional musician rouses crowds to kick up their
heels. Blair Kilpatrick does both. Having earned a Ph.D in
psychology, Ohio-born Kilpatrick was quite content with her career as a
therapist when, during what she calls “a fateful birthday trip to New
Orleans … I developed an unexpected passion for the Cajun accordion.”
At midlife, she began learning to play the instrument and immersed
herself in the Bay Area’s Creole-Cajun music community. The late master
accordionist Danny Poullard became a mentor and friend. With her
fiddler-husband Steve Tabak, Kilpatrick started a band, Sauce Piquante.
She reflects on her concurrent and apparently disparate careers in her
new book, Accordion Dreams: A Journey into Cajun and Creole
Music.
“On the face of it, the two roles do seem strikingly different,”
says the author, who will read and perform at Mrs. Dalloway’s
(2904 College Ave., Berkeley) on March 27. “For me, the private/public
dimension is the biggest contrast.” But she finds similarities, too:
“Many of the things that drew me to psychology as a profession later
drew me to Louisiana French music and the culture surrounding it. I
like to listen to people’s stories. I’ve always been fascinated by
cultural differences and moved by people’s struggles to overcome
adversity.”
Those struggles include midlife crises, of course. “It’s never too
late to try something new,” Kilpatrick says. “I took up music at forty.
After that, the Cajun accordion led me back to writing, an early love.
… I believe we all have the ability — the need — to give
voice to the unexpressed parts of ourselves, especially at midlife.”
She points out that Karl Jung “wrote about the ‘second half of life’ as
a particularly fruitful time. … It can be an unsettling time of
transition, but also a time for growth and adventure. Believe me, at 25
I would have laughed at anyone who suggested I would end up playing the
accordion and singing on stage — and loving each moment of
it.”
While she knows “too many wonderful songs to have a single favorite,
I particularly like old-time Creole music. … It’s a distinctive
sound, very similar to Cajun music, but a little more syncopated and
raw-sounding. And I love the way my husband’s fiddle sounds on those
tunes — it seems to slide around and moan.” Emotions drive
both music and psychology, Kilpatrick asserts, so “in the broadest
sense, my goals as a performing musician have some similarities to my
goals as a therapist. I try to educate people — and to touch them
at an emotional level. I hope they come away feeling better, even
uplifted. Music is a transcendent experience, in the same way good
psychotherapy should be.” 7:30 p.m. MrsDalloways.com
