Eighteenth Street Lounge on Friday October 6, 2006
October 6, 2006 6:44pm
It's 1:33am on Saturday as I type these words. Yesterday (Friday) it was rainy and cold and I was in the mood to go see a movie in the afternoon but a friend of mine invited me to join her and her friends for some drinks around 6:30pm at the 18th Street Lounge in Dupont Circle. I figured I could see the movie anytime and besides it's been more than a week since I last saw my friend so...
First I had to drop off my sound system at Cabanas a little earlier than usual. I decided to go ahead and set up the sound and lights now so that if I ran a little late coming from Dupont all I'd have to do is grab my guitar, plug in my micropone and I'd be ready to start!
So I arrived at 18th Street Lounge around a quarter to 7--OK, so I made a quick stop by Julia's Empanadas to get some food in my stomach before joining my friends for drinks.
I ascended the stairs, nodded to the bouncer and wandered around to the more private back rooms where I expected to see my friends and there she was--just her and her boyfriend anywayz. Kiss, kiss, hug, hug, said our hellos and they scooched over a bit to make some room for me to sit on the well-worn but nevertheless very comfortable antique couch.
I can't even recall the music that was playing. Whatever it was, it nothing remarkable or musically interesting. But in a way it was perfect cuz it filled up the sonic space such that you had to raise your voice slightly to converse but it wasn't so overpowering that you had to strain to listen.
Did the usual small talk of catching up on what we've done since we last saw each other and somehow the conversation drifted towards performance anxiety. Turns out my friend was a hostess for several years in travel show on television. And despite the tons of experience she had in front of the camera, she still got nervous just before the camera started rolling.
October 6, 2006 6:59pm
Logically, you tell yourself, hey, I'm just talking to a camera but your imagination creates a picture in your mind that possibly milllions of people will be watching you and while the camera is rolling you all of a sudden become aware of every little detail of your physical appearance, pitch and tonal quality of your voice.
I can remember last year at the Taste of Bethesda. After the performance one of the dancers and I was approached by one of the local TV stations to do a quick spot where I did about 5 seconds of flamenco guitar music with my dancer friend doing palmas. Easy, right? Yup. But right after that we were supposed to say "Good morning, Washington!"
Now I know this sounds stupid, but everytime we did it, I ended up saying "Good morning, America!" which unfortunately is the name of another program on a competiting network. Not good. Well, it took us, actually, me, FIVE takes to get it right.
Man, you'd think that with all my stage experience I wouldn't get nervous doing a television spot. But I did.
So my friend asked me, "Do you still get nervous when you perform every night?"
"Hmmm...I have to think about this." Thing is that when a performance is over, whether it was especially good or not so good, I"ll briefly look back and try to think about how I could improve it and then I forget about it and move on.
The good answer to that question is, "Yes, I do get nervous every time." The reason why this is a good answer is because the nervousness is an indication that you really care about the quality of the performance. And I do! Now if a student performer comes up to me and asks me that question, I'll probably give that student the good answer for educational purposes.
But the truth is that I don't get nervous anymore, well OK let's say 95% of time I am very confident, but for the 5% of time that I do get nervous, I quickly recover from it once I start playing.
You can call it a mind game, but when you allow yourself to be taken in by the music and the dancing, your mind is so busy that there's no idle time for it to get sucked into nervous territory.
Ugh...you get the idea. But if you want to explore this topic further, I highly recommending getting the book The Inner Game of Music
Anywayz, I made it back to Cabanas just in time for my show. The dancers were Ginette Perea and Sarah Hart. Good performance just as I expected. One of my most enthusiastic fans and a very sweet friend Katya came which made my night. Thanks for coming Katya!
OK, it's 2:19am now. I'm playing at American Dance Institute for the flamenco classes from 12:30pm to 3:00pm and Genoveva is teaching (subbing for Anna Menendez). It's been a while since I last played for Genoveva but I know it'll be fun. Just want to make sure that I get a good night's rest so I can be awake enought to enjoy it. hehe. Allright, enough blogging. Good night!
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