Break on Through to the Other Side

I performed in my first show on Saturday. I played bass and I sang, and I broke a string and borrowed someone else’s and lost my place and played wrong notes and sang out of tune, and hopped up and down in my boots and smiled like a raving fool and had an absolutely fabulous time.

Some of the feedback from my friends has been along the lines of, I feel like I’ve now finally seen you in your element, doing what you’re supposed to be doing – you looked so right, so natural up there. And – they’re right. I feel so natural and so right up there.

I was on my way to rehearsal last week and was on the phone with my girl friend from Long Island. We were talking, again, about work, my work, jobs, career, etc., and as I gushed that being in the band is my favorite thing in my life right now, she asked me what it was about it that I loved?

I love that I get to play with other people, that we create something out of nothing, and offer it to other people. That we create an atmosphere, an experience for others, that we get to have an impact on how people feel, to create emotions and movement in them. I love that I get to be collaborative, it’s not just me and a guitar, that I get to learn and bounce off of others’ ideas, that I get to be a part of a group that wants to do the same thing.

This, isn’t new. I wrote a blog on New Year’s Eve 2011-2012 that included the following:

Performance, A Challenge (12 31 11)

I want to perform. I want to ignite, excite, catalyze, engender, enmorphize. I want you to witness me. I want you to be changed in the witnessing. I want the love in you to awaken and stir as I open myself to you. I want to be there for it. Present. My best, most available self. I want you to fall in love with yourself in the process. Discover the ancient and cavernous depth of your heart. I want to be your tour guide. To lead you where you are ready to be led. I want to change the world, for good. One heart at a time, beginning with my own. And I am becoming Ready. I am ready to transform.

Pyrotechnic Performance: What I want to do when I grow up. (8 5 10)

I want to startle your emotions and steamroll you with feeling. I want to seize and agitate the flames of my inner fuel and fury and ignite and catch you on fire too. I want to blast you out of your seat aghast at the wonder that is G-d bellowing through me. I want to own this. I want to master play and expand this. I want to hone sharpen and broaden the depth of what I have to offer you. I want to journey with you through the lands of the psyche and crash you upon the shores of revelation. I want to allow you to lick and contemplate these wounds as you stagger toward the exit when I'm done. 


I want to heave you into oblivion and gently reel you back in.

None of this has changed, except that I feel I actually am more ready for it. I actually am more ready to simply try, to put myself out there, however expertly or inexpertly, and just try damnit. Forget Yoda, I think there is a try. It’s the same as doing, perhaps. Or rather, I am in fact no more ready than I have been before, but, I'm simply doing it anyway, putting the action first, and watching my willingness follow. (So maybe Yoda was right after all...)

I have been afraid to let you know how important these things are to me. How important it is to me to stand in front of you and give, offer, collaborate, combine, and reveal what I really am and have. I have been afraid that if I tell you what this means to me, and I am disappointed with your response or with my own performance, that I couldn’t take the disappointment. But, I feel ZERO disappointment. The people who are meant to help me in this are showing up. I am getting help to get better, to improve, and even if I didn’t, there’s room for me anyway.

I’m finally listening to myself, which is a phenomenal thing to do.

And you know what, I’m proud of myself, too. Which itself is a phenomenon. 

I have affirmations plugged into my phone to ding on the hour. One of them is: "I intend to make a difference." Although this was meant around my "job," my next "career move," when my friend reported to me yesterday that seeing me up there touched her deeply, inspired her to see me, having lived and now doing what I've always wanted to do -- I realized that perhaps, I already am.