Everything clicks.
I feel the excitement as the audience begins to sense it too. The moment is transported to that never never land of sound and rhythm. All that led me here, forgotten. The hours of contemplation, of practice, of trial an error. As if I was made to do this from the day I was born and then… for just that brief fraction of time, a fatal thought.
“Damn I’m good”
Miss a beat, forget a chord (of this song that I wrote?) and then… there goes the voice.
I look out and see a table of six who choose THIS moment to go elsewhere and realize that I’m already firmly planted on the paranoid road to performance hell. And then I see my friends wincing a polite supportive smile as I panic and make everything worse.
After the show, I’m making the rounds among what’s left. Everyone insists that it sounded… “fine”. I apologize over protests of praise and find myself wondering why I do this shit at all and pine for the days when there was always someone around to kick my ass other than myself.
“NEVER, I MEAN NEVER THINK YOU ARE GOOD!! YOU SUCK AND YOU ALWAYS WILL AND ANY INDICATION OTHERWISE IS A DECEPTIVE PLOY BY YOUR WHIMPY EGO TO TRY AND TURN YOU INTO AN ASSHOLE!!”
