Home from a 10-show tour to Denver and the Pacific Northwest. My bandmate and I flew in and out of Colorado in 24 hours and then starting driving North from San Francisco. This is a relatively new project, just the two of us, so we took it on the road to break it in.
I was not playing drums, but triggering electronic tracks and singing. I’ve written before here that singing has been a long process for me. The technique of singing is like that of any instrument: it can take a lifetime to develop. Then, letting go of technique and of self-consciousness, doing the internal work to really own the performance, this has been the biggest hurdle to being a decent front-person. Playing drums, I have had stage fright exactly once, at my first show. Singing, I have overcome a ridiculous amount of terror, shaking violently on stage and sort of blacking out during performances.
About a week before the tour I was driving home from my practice studio and it sort of fell on me that something had shifted. I didn’t feel fear about the performance, about singing. This was a new feeling. What had shifted was something in my outlook. It was nice to feel as if I had let something go that was no longer serving me.
When I stepped into several venues, people were surprised I didn’t have drums with me. I could feel then that the night would be a bit of a battle. It’s funny how humans love narrow identities. We put people in little labeled boxes, and it is shocking to see that folks are more dimensional than where we originally put them. I wonder how much fear we develop around change purely because we are bucking up against other peoples’ labels of us. It’s hard to reinvent yourself with loved ones fighting so firmly against the change.
My shows were small and ground-floor kinds of events of a new unknown band, but I couldn’t help but think of drummers with more successful careers than mine who had stepped out from behind the drums: Dave Grohl, Dale Crover, Ringo. I could feel their struggles to the resistance of seeing them differently. I guess the persona behind the drums bumps up against the persona at the front of the stage and sets us off-kilter. I think my persona behind the drums is of freedom, of authority. In front of the stage, you see all my reserve, my insecurity, my full personality. The drums are a hurdle of identity we leap over, and then we run face first into the expectations of others.
When folks said something about missing the drums, I knew they were going to be tepid about the show. When we expect something and get something new, we will be judging against expectation and will never see the thing for what it is. This is a human tendency. It’s a safety net we all have, a way we keep ourselves protected from the unknown. The other and the unexpected triggers our stress response. Our thoughts start in on a stream of judgment as we try to make sense of the new turn of events.
I guess this is why it is so hard to live in the moment. We are constantly living in the future or the past, in expectation of what is to come and what has come before, in order to feel secure. Recent studies of our neurology have concluded that our minds have a negativity bias: we expect the worse, and we are wired to remember conflict, trauma and difficulty 60% more often than we remember peacefulness and happy times.
This means that when I come walking into a venue, all happy that I’m exploring new self-expression, developing a new project, working on solidifying my connection to my bandmate, and creating a new performance, if you are there to see me play drums you are going to be bummed out. I knew this going in, and I was watching myself deal with other peoples’ expectations of me. Then, I watched my own expectations of how the show would go. It was a fascinating process.
I remembered all the times in my life when I re-invented myself. My father once told me, “Everything I know about you, I write in pencil.” I have tended to try on identities, to make major changes suddenly and dramatically. I am not letting go of drums by any means, but something about this singing thing was reminding me of all of the ways I have resisted fitting into a small box. I was also thinking about all of the ways I have resisted changing because of the push-back from others.
As most self-booked tours go, we had some decently-attended shows, and then we had some shows in tiny venues playing to just a handful of people. I reveled in that. This process came rushing back to me, how important it is to play to a few uninterested people. Quickly, I remembered that no matter the attendance, you must play as if you were playing for 1,000. Behind the drums, this is easy, but at the front of the stage it’s hard not to leave presence and go into the mind, to tally up the numbers, watch as people drift away, and see the struggle from above: how to capture attention? How to draw people in to what you’re doing? Singing is about being present in the heart, and if my mind is pulling me away, the performance isn’t going to be very good. How to stay in the heart when the mind is telling you to run?
This is the benefit of a tour like this. You must play at all levels to get to a place where you are bullet-proof. I see my singer Anna Kristina and she has been a vocalist for her whole working life. She tells me about gigs she’s had, huge events and tiny goofy things. She can handle anything, absolutely anything on stage. Nothing sets her off-kilter. It is consummate professionalism, and you can only find that doing every kind of show imaginable. Standing up there doing your thing while people seem almost ticked off their evening is being subjected to sound is both humiliating and empowering.
So I was happy, even when it was completely unsettling. The best shows were when no one seemed to know that I was a drummer, and people just took it at face value. My bandmate is a wonderful performer who gives her all no matter what she does, so folks who recognized her were not disappointed. I got to ride on her exuberance, and by the end of the tour we both felt that we had progressed, that things were beginning to gel on stage and that something unique was developing. I found that place inside myself where I knew decent performance was and I sank into that awareness as I took the stage each night.
It was like finding heart energy in meditation, that still and infinite quiet that never changes. I guess that’s what had shifted, that I am more firmly established in that stillness. It translated to this difficult process, this complete exposure of being at the front of the stage. There is a place in which it all flows, and I got little glimpses of that place.
Once, I had an original band with a terrific singer. He was one of those people who is wound up incredibly tightly, and his performances were electrifying. We were recording and he wanted me to stand next to him to do backing vocals. The cue came, I took a breath to sing, and the energy coming off his body in that moment completely silenced me. It was if he was shooting some kind of electricity out with the sound, and I just couldn’t sing next to him. It was one of the most amazing experiences I’ve had in music. The power and electricity came in such a sudden jolt that it felt channeled.
After that, I told myself for a long time that if I didn’t harness that kind of energy, I would never be able to sing. Fortunately, I have come to realize that we all have an energetic source we tap into, and it can look different from person to person. I found my own source this last week, and it is much different than his. I came out of the tour a different singer, a different performer. I don’t have to be something other than all that I am.
I have always loved the beginnings. New endeavors, new relationships, new ways of seeing the world. I aim to let go of the limits others place on me, and thus strengthen myself to release the ones I set on myself. Limitations are just fear, and releasing fear is essential to the performance I want to give and to the life I want to live. How do we hold on to limitation to justify not taking a chance, not embracing change? What if we started brand new today, with no boundary and no safe box to hide in?
And what kind of limitations do we project on others in order to keep ourselves feeling safe and knowing? I had a dear friend once who was 30 years older than me, and I was a chameleon, changing daily in my direction. Every time I thought I would shock him with some new revelation, he would register no surprise, no concern, just an open-hearted exuberance for whatever wonky idea I came up with. It was so nourishing to know that he accepted me, no matter what Clem iteration met him that day.
How can we express this unconditional support for those in our lives? When we hear ourselves speak and we are speaking limitation and fear of change, can we catch the words and transform them? My friend wants a change of career or relationship, the young person takes a surprising turn of interest. When we express support for others we give ourselves a break, too, give ourselves permission to change.
I was fortunate last night to attend a reception for and a talk given by Thupten Jinpa, the Dalai Lama’s English translator. He was a delight, exuding joyful energy and speaking of fascinating modern issues in a Tibetan light. He spoke about the difference of the Tibetan view of death and of the Western way of pushing it away, sanitizing it, the taboo of addressing the inevitable. He said that each day, Tibetans meditate on death, and this keeps the urgency of each moment in life more present and limitless.
I love that idea. This life is finite, and ends always too soon. If I release the limits I place on others out of fear, I am no longer trapped by my own. I’ll unlock this little wooden box and step freely through life, inventing as I go. Then, when I meet death, maybe celebration will be what frees me from the last shred of this life’s identity. At least, I may finally give the performance of a lifetime, with no boundary between me and the infinite possibility that is us all.
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You can hear me read this on Soundcloud HERE or on iTunes HERE.
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