The PMX Subspace Communication Station
My First Performance
Good god, I don't know how I get into these things. I will be having my first public performance in nearly three years on Thursday, November 18th. Where? The Sayreville Fire Academy. I go on ay 9:15 am, and you had to reserve a place. There will be 130 people there. And they will be, 107 of them, teenage girls. The others unaccounted will be teachers and supervisors and guidance counselors and things like that. This performance is for a conference for the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, and it's called "My Journey, My Voice: Empowering Young Women."
Of course, the conference planning committee asked me to attend as a social worker and give some sort of key note. Fuck that, I thought. I don't want to be an all knowing well-intentioned adult practitioner of any sort. I want to be a real god damned person, and yes, I think I do have something to say about "my journey, my voice" and empowerment, especially as it pertains to young women. I sort of remember being one, which is what started this whole music thing to begin with. I was a young woman with a voice once too.
So I told them I'd do it, but that instead of a keynote address I was going to perform a song. They, of course, were delighted with the creativity, the novelty of it. Now I'm shitting myself.
I am performing "Thin Across" an old, old, old song written by Alex and I in around 1993. It's the only thing I can do alone on acoustic guitar that is really appropriate for the audience. You know, Dancin' Barefoot, my usual coffee house pick isn't exactly tasteful (though it would be pretty punk rock, in a totally juvenile and irrelevant kind of way. It'd make for funny stories, and that's about all).
It really bothers me to admit this but I am really scared. I feel like I did when I was 19 and never did this before and really had no idea what I was doing or getting myself into. Now I only have three days before the performance, and I have been practicing, and practicing and I'm so afraid that I'm just going to suck.
But then, wasn't that always my point? I never stopped being afraid I was going to suck. I only rarely, fleetingly, considered the idea that I might not suck. It is a miserable approach to anything, and I don't advise it. But it's still better to be afraid and keep trying I suppose. You get afraid you're going to suck, but then you put yourself in the position where you have to do it anyway. And yeah, sometimes you really do suck. But then you probably suck a lot more when you don't do anything, like me the past three years - you just don't notice it. I'm sure that's not better.
A little humiliation every once in a while, if nothing else, points out a road.
posted by Amy Jacob
11/15/2004 11:48:00 PM Got something to say about it?Go on then.
