I am playing a show tonight – in L.A. – Room 5 Lounge at 8 PM. I really look forward to it.
It is fascinating how much my perception and experience of performing have changed over the past year. Even last few months, really. I care less and less who and how many people are there. No, of course this doesn't mean I want to play to an empty room, and it doesn't mean that I don't diligently let fans and friends know in advance of an event. That would be unprofessional. And I so do love an audience. But the truth is, my experience of performing now is much less rooted in the 'performing' part. Rather, it is mostly in the 'being' part. I have grown so much, vocally and in my ability to translate my own songs outwardly in the recent months, that it has finally become.. a pleasure, more than anything. A pleasure I am there to *share* with people who come. Not to get validation, or to feed off the appreciation; nor is it in order to impress. No, it is me, sharing the bliss.
In the past, I would find myself drifting, wondering about the audience.. wondering who is there and whether they like me or not… being thrown off by a conversation at the bar or in the back of the room.
But something has been happening to me in the last four months or so… a transformation of sorts. Now, I am rooted in my own experience of music. Everyone else there is along for the ride, but just that. I am the pilot. I captain the ship. The audience is a passenger. I am happy to have passengers. But I am in control, and also occasionally lost in the enjoyment of the ride as well as being in charge of such a wonderful ship. That's really the only way I can put it. And it feels so good. And somehow, it works so much better than ever before.
And it makes me so happy, because there were times in my life in the recent 2-3 years when I was very close to giving it all up because I didn't feel this connection to my music. But I have persevered, like the stubborn little Caricorn that I am, and have kept moving foward. Sometimes I made myself do it and my heart wasn't in it. But perhaps it is much like when I was 11 and studying piano and I hit a period in my childhood when my attention span was all over the place. I stopped practicing and my mom put her foot down – she played the disciplinarian card and made me do it for a little while. Vkus prihodit vo vremya yedi – is a Russian saying: 'you get into the enjoyment/tasting part, as you are already eating your meal'. I got back into it and now in retrospect owe her so much for making me do it so I could get over that little hump. Perhaps what I did now and then over the past 2-3 years was much like that, except it was my adult self being the disciplinarian to the 'child' self. Ah, but it's the child self that makes the music flow and brings delight into it. It's a fickle and fragile self.
I thought about it the other day.. The adult self can often be the critic, as well, and we all know how well children – especially volatile, creative ones – take to critique. They sulk or get hurt and withdraw. Their innate sensitivity which is needed to 'channel' art and pick up on vibrations of this multi-coloured universe makes them also prone to take criticism very, very badly, and personally.
But what has happened to me in the last year, or few months is that when I perform now, I finally sound to myself like what I have always heard in my head. And so the adult self is now much kinder and it can 'kick back' and just enjoy, and let the child play with the paint.
It is my understanding that perhaps every artist has this paradox to work with: a balance of the child that creates and the adult that filters and guides. Too much of the adult, and the magic does not flow. Too much of the child… well that depends.
