On Performance, Vol. I: Pre-Show Anxiety
Is the anxiety performers feel before a show worth it?
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
- T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock”
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Fri, 3/1 | Brooklyn, NY | Sleepwalk | 7:00 PM (Sold out!)
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Thurs, 3/21 | Bedford, NY | Songs & Stories | 7:00 PM (Tickets)
Thurs, 3/28 | Glens Falls, NY | Park Theatre | 7:00 PM (Tickets)
Sauna Salon
I sweated in an apartment packed wall-to-wall with artists. This was September, the heat of summer ebbing but in waves, and this wave was one of resurgence: Heat lightning sputtered in the sky, the air sagged with almost-rain, and the combined heat of thirtyish bodies in a living room built for four, maybe five, was sauna-like.
I was nervous. Singer/songwriters whose names were familiar to me from show posters and social media clips dotted the room, their presences magnetic and intimidating. The purpose of the gathering was to share our work, salon-style. I would perform in front of people I admired, people who represented something I wanted: status within the Brooklyn music community, approval from people whose approval mattered.
Physical symptoms of nerves included an accelerated heart rate, stress-sweat commingling with heat-sweat, and jittering fingers — none of which would be conducive to a confident performance. This was a particularly intense episode, but almost invariably before performances, I endure an episode like it, an episode of near-suffocating anxiety.
It isn’t stage fright. Actually, the moment I step onstage and begin to perform is the end of the anxiety, because it’s the end of anticipation, the moment when anticipation turns into action. Anticipation is full of horror stories — the worst possible version of events: a performance so bad it validates every doubting voice that’s ever whispered to me about my inadequacies. Action has never once been this horrible; even amid the sickness of a poor performance, some jewel of a feeling redeems it, some necessity of grief lets me outlast it.
No, it’s something else. It’s the feeling you get in dreams, when you’ve inexplicably arrived at school or work having forgotten the crucial step of putting on pants: I’m going to make a fool of myself.
I’m not prepared for what’s coming my way. I haven’t done all I could have done to make this a success. I’m about to demand that an audience (of probably too few people) stop what they’re doing and give me their attention, and my performance will not justify the interruption.
The last sentence paraphrases Livingston Taylor, whom I’ve seen speak about nervousness on multiple occasions. Per Livingston, performing is fundamentally an act of hubris, one in which a person or a group demands the attention a much larger group, and tacitly asserts the interruption will be worth it.
We performers know this assertion could be true or could be false. We’ve prepared to justify our interruptions through rehearsal, but we know the blind spots in our preparation might prove fatal. We’ve felt when the assertion is false, during other people’s performances that left us calculating exactly how many dollars per minute we wasted on the ticket. We’ve also felt it ring false after our own substandard performances — an indescribably ill feeling.
Knowing an unjustified interruption is possible, knowing no amount of preparation will guarantee that every audience member’s attention is sufficiently rewarded, I march to shows as if to a firing line, to the people who will finally see me for what I am: a fraud.
A Little Green Left
In the sauna salon, I sang “A Little Green Left,” then a new song, not yet honed to its ideal expression. I felt mostly good about it, but I was still doubtful about how bare-faced I’d made the lyrics: Would the metaphorical clarity, the lack of mystery, hurt me? Was the song too simple, too obvious, too basic to resonate — especially in a room of artful singer/songwriters?
When my fingers struck the song’s first A chord, the symptoms of nervousness were in full swing. But by the end the song’s introductory passage — a lilting tilt from A to Amaj7 and back, a willowy sway you might feel in the cradle of a hammock — the symptoms abated, and the act of performance took over. I don’t think the performance was earth-shatteringly brilliant, but it was a credible account of the song and of me as an artist.
So, let us contrast pre-show anxiety with its inverse: post-show elation.
The feeling after a show, particularly after a good one, is a feeling of tremendous relief, like at the last moment, the firing line was ordered to stand down, and I earned, or was erroneously awarded (I don’t ask questions), another few hours of freedom before the next trial.
In the course of a couple hours, hours that are unremarkable other than the fact that I sang during them, I’ll have gone from conjuring and cowering before horror stories to an edenic sense of calm. From Hell to Heaven, with a brief stint onstage, on Earth.
No matter how much I do this, no matter how many songs I write or how well-rehearsed I feel, I’m never free of the feeling that tonight could be the night that my fraudulence is revealed. And I suspect — though I’ve tasted little more than a teaspoon of “success” — that no amount of achievement will make it go away, either.
I think a lot about these feelings. Are they necessary? Is there some way to bring balance to this pendulum, to make it swing a little less erratically? Or would balancing it rob me of the fuel I need to perform with conviction?
My position at the moment is that, yes, they are necessary. The depth of my anxiety is the depth of my care, and the depth of my care is the effort I pour into preparation. As frightening and unpleasant as pre-show anxiety is, it also feels like standing very close to the core of something — and the farther I get from that something, the duller my days become.
I want to stand near that something. I believe the intensity of emotion that accompanies that proximity indicates something precious: The more intense the feelings get, the closer I get to reality — or at least, to the reality I want.
Dustin, I love your writing. Thank you for sharing your journey. I enjoy listening to you perform and reading your beautiful words.