Kate Ceberano, 56, has been inspiring audiences with her virtuosity and vitality since she first burst onto the music scene at age 16 with her funk band I’m Talking. Her glittering 40-year career has traversed Top 10 ARIA charts, musical theatre stages, television and film, and has recently culminated in an anthemic new album, My Life is a Symphony, a reimagining of her most iconic tracks with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and an illustrated memoir, Unsung: A Compendium of Creativity.
She shared how she stays physically and mentally well.
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1. Embroidery
The Australian singer-songwriter, known for sultry hits like "Pash" and "Bedroom Eyes", has brought along her latest craft project to our Zoom call – a kimono she’s embroidering by hand – so she can stitch as we chat.
“I’m obsessed with textiles,” she explains, her eyes lighting up as she holds the vibrant fabric up to the camera. “I make quilts and other things because there’s something so rich and meaningful in every stitch a person makes in a garment that someone will wear or a family will own or you’ll wrap your babies in… When I think about coming to do [embroidery], my heart flutters, like love. I get butterflies.”
It’s impossible not to get swept up in her enthusiasm for her wholesome hobby.
The album – Kate’s 30th – was already in the works when the pandemic hit in 2020. The orchestral parts were in the can and Kate was preparing to record her vocals when “everything just evaporated in front of my face,” she recalls. That discombobulating time had a silver lining, though – it set her searching for other outlets for her creativity that she still turns to for a dose of comfort and joy three years down the track.
2. Art
If you follow @therealkateceberano on Instagram, you’ll know that Kate isn’t only a talented pop, jazz and soul singer, she’s an accomplished visual artist, too. Her intricate paintings, embroidery and decorated guitars are a hit with her fans; the same sumptuous works adorn her new book, Unsung, which fuses personal stories of her life and career with poems, song lyrics and artworks.
“It’s probably the greatest thing I’ve ever got to do in my life,” Kate says of the book. “I’ve done a lot of things; certainly, as an artist, I’ve expressed myself. But we were in COVID and because of the impermanence of songs and live concerts… I just really wanted to put something permanent into my life’s experience. So, I just put down the world as I remembered it, in my industry.”
Writing is just one of the endeavours Kate channelled her energy into when life as we knew it ground to a halt. But when the second wave of lockdowns hit Melbourne, which endured some of the harshest restrictions in the world, she fell into what she describes in her book as a “deep, dark hole” with no choice but to “art my way out of it”.
“I had to self-soothe,” Kate reflects, “and I found that the quilting and the painting and the other things helped me to pass time without thinking too much. I feel like the act of doing things with your hands turns off the aimless thinking – and it certainly stops you from scrolling.”
Selling her prints and embellished guitars also gave Kate a much-needed boost of confidence at a time when her livelihood as a performer was ripped away. “I did find it very exciting that there was something else I could attend to, and that people might want just as much as a song,” she says. “From a mental health viewpoint, [the idea of] producing my way back to feeling valuable,or that there was some value to what I was producing, was really, really good for my mind.”
3. Intermittent fasting to shift COVID kilos
That tumultuous time also coincided with Kate’s experience of menopause, a life change that she can’t help but link to the stress of lockdown. “You know, I do think that, like some people who’ve had accidents will suddenly get grey hair, when COVID hit, I mentally decided, ‘Well, that’s me done. I’m obviously in retirement.’ And I feel as though my mind announced a statement that every cell in my body attended to!” she says, laughing.
When the menopause symptoms hit, Kate’s first response was to research what was going on. “I studied every single thing and I got every test under the sun, moon and stars to discover what it wasn’t,” she says. “It wasn’t cholesterol, it wasn’t diabetes, it wasn’t any damage from shingles, there were no blood problems, there was no arthritis, and it wasn’t osteo. So then I delineated that I had some really interesting reactions during menopause to – and this is tragic – wine, exercise and sex!”
Kate soon realised that her usual health routine needed to adapt as a result. “Suddenly the things that used to work didn’t work anymore,” she admits. “I think you’ve got to be really mindful of being overweight, because it seems the liver and the body doesn’t work in the same way; it gets overheated faster. If you want to have a glass of wine and have sex, those good things, you actually need to lose weight. I must’ve gained 15 kilos over lockdown without even trying, and the heavier I am, the worse it becomes.”
To shift the extra kilos, Kate turned to her tried-and-true routine of intermittent fasting, but with a menopause-related tweak – she’s added in more carbs to avoid feeling “tear my face off” distraught.
4. Low-impact exercise
She’s also a devotee of reformer and mat Pilates, which she practises with friends. And when those hot flushes hit? “If I’m overheating, I just reverse the flow. I’ll go to a water aerobics class and just stay cool for a while and it’s unreal,” she says.
But the biggest change Kate made was to her mindset. “At the end of the day, and this applies to anything in life, if you don’t discipline yourself, life will do it for you. You [have to] read the signs and say, ‘Well, clearly, I’m not taking care of this well enough’ and I’m going to have to take care and pay attention.”
5. Gratitude and recognising achievements
When you think of Kate Ceberano, it’s impossible not to picture that radiant grin and personality. But like everyone, Kate admits she can fall down a rabbit hole at times. The key to coming out of it is gratitude, a lesson she learnt early on from her father, renowned karate master Tino Ceberano.
“Before I even got into the arts, I knew what fame felt like because my dad is very famous in martial arts,” she explains, recalling frequent formal visits from Japanese dignitaries during her childhood. “The way my dad continued to be famous was by simply being grateful. His smile and his open face would tell anyone who was in the house that they were welcome and that he was grateful for them, and grateful for their contribution to his community. I’ve really learnt a lot from my dad.”
6. Self love
Now, whenever Kate ever finds her mood slipping, she reminds herself of “all the things I’ve done in my life that I’m proud of,” she shares. “The most successful mantra for me is: ‘What you put your attention on grows,’” Kate adds. “So, if you put your attention on joy, you could just as much grow that and harvest that as you could your trials and trauma. Like a muscle in a fitness class, I think you can build up your self-love muscle.”
Kate's new book Unsung is out via Simon & Schuster.
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