Wednesday, December 31, 2008

19. some thoughts about performance

i like to play guitar and sing songs so much, it's just about the greatest joy in my life, but i can't play in front of people. of course i can strum some chords and sing "total eclipse of the heart" and "kokomo" but when it comes to injecting anything genuine into a performance i freeze up. singing anything i've written in front of another human being seems a monumental feat.

a few weeks ago i forced myself to sing some songs i'd written in front of my friend ro. i had to send her a text message and say "RO, the next time we jam please please PLEASE make me play a couple of songs for you" and being the good friend she is she made me do it, i would have backed out otherwise probably. it was really hard but i played two songs i'd written recently, called "blue chair" and "you know who to call" and then later i played another i wrote a long time ago called "bear skin coat" and i felt a huge weight off my chest once i'd done it. i should do things like that more often, but i don't know how.

it's funny, when i first played the flute at recitals and competitions and auditions and such i was incredibly nervous, but then i did it so much and it was such a rush that i began to love it and i shook out all the stagefright and by the time i was sixteen i'd played to audiences of hundreds and hundreds of people and it didn't shake me at all, i loved it, i got a wonderful egotistical rush from the notion of controlling a crowd, who were generally easily impressed by simple chromatic runs and thrilled by double-tonguing. one time i was busking and was playing a nocturne by chopin, a really gorgeously romantic piece of music, and a handsome young couple walked past and then stopped turned to look at me, and smiled at each other and then at me, and then they turned to each other and kissed and i was certain i could see real joy in their eyes and that one moment validated every tiresome note i'd ever practised and every moment i'd sat quivering backstage, i still think about it when i play music now.

but now that i've had a couple of years break from performing in front of people, the stage fright is bigger and worse than it ever was. it's a shame. and it would be okay if it were still the flute, but now i'm dealing with two instruments i'm not overly familiar with or even good at, assuming you count the voice as an instrument, which it sort of is but is also something infinitely scarier and more revealing. at least with the flute i found out after a while that i was good, which was the point at which it became easier.

(interestingly i did assume i was terrible at the flute for the first few years. it wasn't false modesty, i was just certain that i was hopeless. it wasn't until i won my first competition that it ever occured to me i might have any talent at all. not that i was prodigious at the flute or anything of the sort, but i was certainly better than i initially assumed.)

it makes me kind of miserable, when i stop and think about it. performance is the greatest high i can think of, but i'm absolutely fucking terrified of it. i want a life that involves music somehow - playing it, teaching it, coordinating it, something - but sometimes this seems like an impossible obstacle, or something that will haunt me forever.

i guess it's something to work on in the new year?
speaking of which, a very happy new year to you all.

love love love
lion

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