That's You in the Spotlight!

performinigIt's a ritual. Your ritual. The only one that makes any sense; getting into your music, getting it on stage, and getting off on it all. Yeah, that is you in the spotlight, losing your religion. Or maybe making up your own.

Performing is your mission, your message, your sanity, and your release; or maybe just a very public way to exorcise your very private self. Whatever. What you do know is this: The stage is the place where somebody is listening and something you say has weight. Big stage, small; a dozen people, a hundred dozen. It doesn't matter as long as you get to do it.
Sometimes making your confession comes easy. Running on instinct, you are jammed up and everything...everything is right.... the power, the intensity, the certainty of what you do and why you're there. You can't imagine owning anything better.
Joe Cocker
Marta with Joe Cocker

But some nights you're throwing up backstage before you go on. The audience is packed and the guitar player showed up on time, imagine that. Nothing seems to be going wrong with anybody else, but you feel out of it. You're jumpy, or hyper, or mopey, or cranky, or just looking for a rock to hide under. You're head tripping on some important bozo who didn't RSVP, or you just had a fight with your girlfriend or drummer or mother or all three.

You try to shake it, but the more you think about it, the edgier you get. You get up on stage, go through the motions, more or less. They scream and clap, and love you, but inside you're tearing yourself apart. Tonight your creative instinct turned "Basic Instinct". What's up with that?
I know it is a bit overwhelming at times, conjuring the energy for every performance. But it's supposed to be overwhelming. You want to be overwhelmed. That's why you want to sing instead of deliver donuts on a bicycle to the fiftieth floor where the suits are signing a record deal with somebody else's donut boy.
Don't settle for your little Sybil number!

Singing lessons
Create a Pre-Performance Ritual
Artists under stress need a pre-performance ritual to quiet the mind chatter and focus on the creativity, not the critics.
A way of writing exactly what we mean without tossing the good stuff in the trash.
A way to ride the voice wavering or cracking or going breathless.
A way to stay in the moment, in the emotions of the lyric, and not forget a word.
A liberation from leg shakes, stomachaches and fingers locking up at the keyboard.
A way of getting out of the way.

 

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