#1690, Friday, July 15: Performance anxiety enters the picture

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Post 1690, Day 197 of 2016
- 2,023 days since I started this blog -

Daily Comment

A wonderful night with i am Fool tonight. A good show, well-played, with a good crowd, outdoors with perfect weather.

But, I'm stressing a bit with my playing. Getting into the zone less while I concentrate on my performance.

Why? I think the reason is my recent five weeks of learning new music, analytically listening to unfamiliar bass lines. I'm growing, striving - exactly what I don't do (consciously) when I play in the zone.

About two months ago, I was asked to take the bass chair for a cabaret to raise funds for a local theater group. The program was all Beatles songs, including the entire second side of Abbey Road.

Being a Beatles fan, I agreed. It only took a little while to realize that, except for four songs, nobody'd ever asked me to play Beatles tunes, and I hadn't. This was going to be a lot of work, learning, growth.

Learning the songs was stressful, wonderful, and made me a little anxious - in a good way, if being anxious can be good.

I fell out of the moment, thinking about the performance to come, even as I attempted to master twenty-seven parts played by an icon on bass. Even as I noted the things about Paul McCartney's style that were very different than mine, and the common things, his bass lines challenged my long-standing policy of not playing other people's bass lines.

I did it. I did a lot of listening, a lot of practicing on my own, and a lot of rehearsing. The end result was a performance I was proud of and the show being well-received.

The next day, I accepted a gig to play with my friend Frank Stepanek, ace guitarist, drummer, bass player, producer, recording engineer, three-time Grammy nominee, full-time crazy person.

There was a week to prepare for the gig. During the course of that week, we had five rehearsals. Frank has his own way with a song, and is very specific about what he wants. Leading a trio, he knows the bass and drum parts that will work for him.

He doesn't use charts, he doesn't even know the names of all the songs. The most difficult thing is when a song is familiar (lots of Hendrix and reggae, for instance). Then, you have to learn his version, which means unlearning everything else you knew about the song going in.

The last rehearsal, four hours long, happened this afternoon. I am not confident I will execute to his satisfaction. I have performance anxiety. I am not here now.

It made me tired, and it affected my unrelated performance with Fool tonight, for no good reason.

Food and Diet

Today's Weight:                      199.2 lbs.

Previous Weight (7/14):              198.4 lbs.

Net Loss/Gain:                     +   0.8 lbs.

Diet Comment

Reversion to mean, or a bad reading yesterday (which is what I think)? No matter - a single reading has no significance.

Food Log 

Breakfast
12:45pm:  A couple of Quest bars (on the move!).

Lunch
6:10pm:  Pepperoni and Dal Maktandi (Lentil curry) with chia seeds and hemp seeds, over cauliflower.

Dinner
Pepperoni and kimchi.

Liquid Intake
   Espressos: 0;  Coffee:  0 oz.;  Water: 80+ oz. and 2 pours of Jameson's.

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