Performance anxiety…

Thursday night I got up on a stage for the first time in years. It wasn’t great, but it didn’t suck and I was invited back to sing with Swingstreet, the group that so graciously allowed me to crash the stage tonight during the pre-Festival of the Horse activities in downtown Georgetown.

Truly, it was fun, and it’s something I wish I could do on a regular basis. If you have never had the pleasure of performing music, dance or theatre live on stage, it’s hard to explain.

Once upon a time when I was a music student at Morehead State University, I had a work-study position as stage manager of the music department recital hall. Most of my time was spent backstage, listening to performances given by faculty members and my classmates. As a result, I never did spend a lot of time in the audience.

On the occasions when I was the one on stage, it was exhilarating. Naturally, my first time performing solo, I was scared shitless. I can’t remember what piece of music I played. I’m hoping one of the founding members of the Tom Musgrave Bassooniacs or my April 1994 spread in Tiger Beat will have that information.

Being my first time, as with the first time performing other pleasurable activities, I sucked. I hit probably 97 percent of the right notes, though in my defense I had only been playing bassoon for about two years, and that instrument is a bastard to master. I’m sure the tempo was off and, the bassoon being what it is, intonation was not always the best. But I got through it and lived to do it again. And, again, like that other pleasurable activity, the more you do it, the better you get at it. The fear is still there, but over time it becomes your friend; the thing that propels your ass out on stage to collect the cheers, applause, and, in some cases, women’s underwear by the truckload.

(That was a memorable senior recital. I’m quite sure the high point was my cadenza in the first movement of W.A. Mozart’s Concerton for Bassoon. I bought my cadenza from an out-of-work musicologist who needed money to support his Tylenol PM habit. He promised it would be a panty-peeler. Who knew?)

(True story. I hate Timothy McVeigh. For the obvious reasons, of course, but also because my senior recital date was April 19, 1995. How do I remember this? Because that’s the same day McVeigh chose to turn Oklahoma City’s Alfred Murrah Building into rubble. On the day of my recital. Thanks a lot, dick.)

(This signals the end of the parenthetic thoughts.)

So, to this day, I disdain being in an audience. I’d much rather be up on stage. And I think anyone in the entertainment industry, from operatic tenors to pole dancers, will agree that the best seat in the house is standing center stage with a spotlight following your every move.

Unless you’re name is John Wilkes Booth, you just shot Abraham Lincoln and jumped to the stage, delivering your one-line Latin soliloquoy. Then the spotlight just sucks.