Learning to Perform Without Nerves

This summer I’ve spent a lot of time at the Medford Farmer’s Market.  It has been quite the experience and started with a simple statement.  “I don’t know if you’re interested, but I’m a storyteller.”

It’s interesting to see the difference between identifying as “someone who tells stories” and as a “storyteller.”  The same is true for any art form.  Although I decided that I would be an art major when I was a freshman in college, it took me about three more years after that to actually call myself an artist.  What we call ourselves is telling not only of what we do but of who we are and how we think about it.

This summer helped me learn to call myself not only a storyteller but a musician.  When I started storytelling I jumped straight from the person who had told a story in a class for graduate school to an officially introduced storyteller.  Because of this I didn’t have much of a chance to dance around my identification.

My interaction with music has been very different.  I’ve been playing piano since I was five but it took at least ten years before I started calling myself a pianist.  Unfortunately, due to my lack of access to a piano, I’m starting to realize that I am now a lapsed-pianist.  A new identification all together.  However, as my relationship to being a pianist decrease, I have finally taken the step to call myself a musician and even a singer-songwriter.

Although I have been singing and writing my own songs for the greater part of my life, only in the past four years have I started playing them for anyone, and only in the past year or so have I actually felt comfortable doing so.  Between my two hours today at the farmers’ market and my two hours on September, 28th I have officially broken through the barrier to “performing musician.”

It’s a very new place for me.  Music has always been my most personal art form, the one I am most nervous about sharing.  Theater?  No problem.  Writing? Everyone should read it and give me feedback!  Art?  Just look!  And, most recently, storytelling, my most natural performance art form yet.

But since I was a child and sat down at my first piano performance I have always trembled when I play music.  Only in this past year I have started to actually embrace the joy of performing.  Drawing a connection between storytelling and playing music has been essential in this.  If storytelling is so natural, how can I be so scared of playing music?  Once I could ask that question, the answer became that I wasn’t.