Rick, here is an excerpt from Ferlinghetti that seems to me to sum up performers birthdays.

Constantly risking absurdity and death whenever he performs above the heads of his audience the poet (folksinger) like an acrobat climbs on rime to a high wire of his own making and balancing on eyebeams above a sea of faces paces his way to the other side of the day performing entrachats and sleight-of-foot tricks and other high theatrics and all without mistaking any thing for what it may not be For he's the super realist who must perforce perceive taut truth

(happy birthday, anyway, chance)