I was at the Mezrab event yesterday evening, with my guitar - ready to play my Mezrab song to the masses. There must have been 80 or more people, a beautiful evening, a great occassion.
I'd been practising all day, I needed to make sure the lyrics were embedded in my head so I wouldn't forget them in the anxiety of the moment. Even had a good intro-story worked out that was meant to get me in the mood and make contact with the audience before I sang - and to tell them a little about me, my music, and what this whole storytelling thing has done for me in the last few weeks.
I was waiting for Criss to turn up, she'd be there after the first pauze, so I arranged with Sahand that I play in the second session. He suggested I just do one verse and chorus at the beginning to warm people up and I agreed. Seemed like a good idea, and it was, because I ended up not doing the whole song......... that would have been a disaster!
I'll admit I was nervous, had been a little all day, but I've been nervous before and managed to deal with it. And I really wanted to do this so I was certain I'd deal with it this time. I haven't played my songs live for many years, and I knew I was being pretty ambitious to want to sing at this venue, but I'd been prep-talking myself all day... "it's going to be okay, once you get up there, and just see them as a group of friends, and you sang for 80 people at your school and it worked, and this is not an audition, and just focus on wanting to sing for those nice people..."
All that talk got me to the Tolhuistuin and onto the stage, but I was suppressing the nervousness. This can work, it's worked before, but there were a number of factors that made it difficult for me. With such a big audience I couldn't sing and play at my normal volume or nobody would be able to hear me. I can sing louder but I can't play guitar loud, I'm not that good a guitar player. And when I try to play loud my technique gets sloppy and the sound is not musical, and I'm not busy with singing the song anymore but with trying to play the guitar, and I'm aware that it sounds bad and I'm not making contact with the audience, and my hands are starting to shake so I'm missing the strings... this is what happened yesterday evening, and it all happened in the space of the first bars of the song and by the time I got to singing I forgot the bloody words... the FIRST words. Great start! I stopped, started again, managed to get through to the chorus and closed the song. Whew!
Criss turned up a little later. I told her I was playing after the break. Sahand didn't call me up during the second session, I think he sensed my doubts. All through the second set I noticed that my nervousness was turning to terror... I need to blow this off. But how does that seem when I've walked in with a guitar and not done anything? I talked to Sahand in the second pauze, told him I didn't think it wise to go up there and make a mess of things - I obviously wasn't ready. He was understanding and didn't find it strange - it's a big crowd if you're not used to it, it's overwhelming, and even he can't play his instrument in this setting. So that was it, I put my guitar back in the case and just listened to the stories the rest of the night. And felt the stress and anxiousness seep away out of my body - soooooo glad I hadn't invited lots of friends to come and see me perform.
There were some really good storytellers that evening - but I'm not there yet.
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