Hey yo
My stage fright has come back…. My fright to sing at all in front of anyone actually, is back with a vengeance.
Last friday, I was hanging out with my friend and her boyfriend and his mates. She is from Canada, He is from Barbados as are his friends and one of the guy’s girlfriend’s is Greek.
The only reason their nationalities are important is because I was inspired and a tiny bit jealous at how free they all are. I mean free as in confident, & not fucked up, not particularly self conscious and incredibly cool & light to chat with. Some of them are pretty musical and play guitar and sing etc etc…
My friend pulls out the guitar and starts to sing, in fact, SHE asked US if we would mind if she played for us. WHOAH, GO GIRL. She is super flipping cool and it really is true that Canadians are safe as fucccckkk. ANYWAY
She does her thing and is great, she has a great musical ear and her playing was just perfect. Then one of the guys does the same thing! In my mind I was freaking out in case they asked me to sing and I couldn’t even join in when I knew one of the songs, I was frozen stiff scared.
what the helllllll man, what is wrong with me! (don’t answer that)
Then the greek goddess puts on Solange…. there was no stopping me! I did not care anymore and we were dancing and singing at the top of our voices trying to lure the others to join us but they would not haha… too busy shooting shit in the kitchen to dance around with these 2 pumped up on girl power girls. She then puts on more rnb bangers and all 3 of us girls were singing at the top of our voices and pretending we were a girlband. (although I think we would smash it in a girlband IRL)
If the music is loud, I WILL sing loud but if I think people are actually listening to me…. I freeze and the anxiety that cripples a lot of my daily life comes along with it’s mate ‘stage fright’
I love my british friends, obviously, but the subtle (or not so in some cases) cynicism and uptightness is pretty damaging to artistic types….the ones who maybe don’t have the gene that is the ‘self big up’ thing. i.e me
I am guilty of it myself! People with guitars at parties back in the day used to grate on my snobbery and would encourage a certain dickishness to come out in my head. Others who felt the same would conjoin together in some sort of dick off circle, judging & sending bad vibes.
In reality, this person (regardless of their skill or playing ability or even in some cases ability to hear that the guitar is OUT OF TUNE) is sharing something in that moment that is pure and unashamed and pretty beautiful actually.
This all may sound super obvious to you nice people out there, but I have a proper music snob in my head.
Luckily, over the last few years it has started to soften and I now just think people are beautiful and sweet for wanting to share whatever they are feeling at that moment in time whether it is through music or poetry or drawing or art or whatevs.
You wana share with me your weird and wonderful thoughts then please send them over to me!
So in light of all this waffling on
Here is a video i have been sitting on for a while of my first open mic I ever did with original material
Both of the original pieces in this vid have moved along to different versions so are a bit null in void BUT it doesn’t matter. This is what they were then and hopefully when I get some up to date confidence in me right here right now you can hear where they travelled to!
SunsetSoulSister 