10/25/09

Stage Fright!

A friend of ours on here has a show coming up on Thursday and he asked me about ways to overcome stage fright. I think this could apply to public speaking etc as well.
Hi Joe!
My take on stage fright; Most fear comes from your body basically accumulating stomach acid and has a need to protect itself, impress someone or not be made fun of. An animal could actually get it too from the instinct to defend itself. Wild, huh?
 
What I had to do to overcome it was to get to the root of it all and have a deep reflection over what I thought was threatening to me. What was really making me nervous? Were the people in the audience going to swarm the stage and attack? Was there someone specifically I was trying to impress out there? Was everything on the line and I wasn't going to be able to make a mortgage payment if it didn't work? Is my fear based on anything real or am I just imagining a worst case scenario?
 
Stage fright although it feels damn real when you are standing out there, is a dream killer overall. If you think about it, when you are busy worrying about what people are thinking, you are ripped out of your creative headspace and a wall is erected so you can't do anything past being on the defensive. But, when you are on stage, being defensive is not a good role like in hockey or football. When you get up to entertain, your job is to emit emotion to people out there. You want to be able to give everything you have, not have a wall between you and them. (that is if your goal for making music is pure)
 
You can actually harness it too if all else fails. The extra adrenaline kick you get (like an animal gets to protect itself) could be part of what ramps you up, although my goal was to kill it altogether so I could control everything I was transferring. That way, you can be in charge of all you are doing in order to reach a higher level of your art!
 
Lastly, I had to ask myself, why am I even doing this in the first place? I had to question why I am sharing what I am doing. The answer was I wanted to build an intimacy with the audience where we could rock out and I could perhaps touch someone. It's what I try to do with writing too. When I write, I write because I need to get something out and then share later on. When you put your show together, the intent should be to be creative and then share...not do it to impress anyone. If you can get past caring what others think because music means a lot to you, you’re on a good path.
 
If your motive for making music is pure and your goal is to touch others, nervousness shouldn't be there. You should be fixating on giving everything you have to an evening of music. A lot of the time it’s these ‘get famous quick’ shows that teach us we have only one chance to make the impression, but you know what I have found? It’s not about making an impression…it’s about sharing. If you have the solid purpose to what you are doing, it should be about the purpose, not the adulation. It’s essentially a path to get back to purity.
 
Don't forget, with the exception of a few drunks who don't even know where they are, (ha!) your audience WANTS you to do well, they WANT to be entertained. They don't want to see you fail because there is a good chance they had a sucky work week and you are an escape for them! But for some strange reason, we jump onstage expecting that the world wants to laugh at us, not with us.

Have a great show on Thursday, above all…enjoy it!! You are making MUSIC!
Karen :)

"When you dance, your purpose is not to get to a certain place on the floor. It's to enjoy each step along the way." ~Wayne Dyer

1 comment:

  1. ya oughtta just gett'm to do some private parties first, just among 50 friends or something ... often just playing guitar in a downtown park will draw a random crowd too .. to practice on

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