Cue the Chinese Dancers

Today was supposed to be my day playing in the Common. (For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Boston Children's Museum, the Common is the main area on the second floor.) I was excited - I'd done several PlaySpace gigs in a row, and while those are always fun, I was looking forward to playing for the older kids. I show up, climb the stairs and the performance area was already set up. Couldn't have been for me...I don't think any of the floor staff - or anyone except my direct supervisor - knows my schedule.

Nope. "Oh, we have Chinese dancers coming in."

"What time?" I ask.
"10:30."

Of course. Cause 10:30 is the time I'm supposed to start. So I wander around the floor, looking for a space to set up. Can't set up in the art Gallery, where I used to play before I moved to the Common - there's a weaving exhibit there now and no room for me. So I went to PlaySpace and played for the bitties.

Only about four of them. But still, considering I had no plan except for the program I'd put together for my last PlaySpace session, it didn't go too badly. And, hey...I can use my Common program for NEXT Saturday. Bonus!!

Striking the Balance

This week, I took a two-and-a-half-day vacation. That may not sound like much, but I've been working more or less nonstop lately. So nearly three days off was a BIG deal. I willed myself not to think about work, and trust me, it wasn't easy. I was at the beach. I went swimming, shopping, fell asleep to the sound of the ocean, read books in bed and on the lawn with the waves lapping at the shore.

Now, don't get me wrong. I love what I do, and I consider myself extremely lucky to be able to do it and get paid to boot. But I realized as I was driving home that I have been focusing entirely on my work for a very long time. So much so, actually, that I had forgotten what it was like to just be me. Without the guitar and shaker eggs. I knew that making a success of my career in children's music was still a priority...but light was beginning to dawn that it shouldn't be my ONLY one. I vowed to change that.

It is now 7:15. I got home from work at 4 pm. As soon as I got home, I went straight to my bookshelf and pulled out my songbooks, desperate to find some new songs that would work with the youngest kids - 0 to 3 year olds, my PlaySpace crowd. About 10 minutes ago I looked up and realized that I was still working.

That's right, I had been working since I got home from work. And if I didn't do something soon, I might be working until I went to bed. I went to the computer to write this post...and immediately googled "fingerplays."

Oops.

Make no mistake. I am proud of my commitment to my work. I am proud of the work that I do. And I do everything I can to make each show a success. But I fear that if I don't have a life outside of it, I will place TOO much importance on each show, and my fear of any failure at all will cripple me. Not only will it zap my energy and paralyze my voice, but it will make those inevitable little flops - a missed chord here, a mixed-up verse there - make me feel like a failure as a person.

On the other hand, if I have a life and enjoy it, I can relax and have fun with my music programs instead of freaking out about whether I'm good enough. And if I stop freaking out, I have a sneaking suspicion that the result will be more fun not just for me, but for the kids and parents as well. After all, the songs I do that are the best received are generally the ones I enjoy the most.

I cannot tell a lie. I know I'll do a bit more work before I go to bed tonight. But I promise, that is not all I will do.

My Disaster Story

I don't know much about sound systems. But I do know this.

Your microphone pack is not supposed to fly off of your body in the middle of a performance, hit the floor and split into two parts. I am sure of this.

OK, OK. I MAY have clipped my battery pack to a quarter-inch string of ribbon on the front of my dress. I MAY have had it like that when I got to the part in "Going to Kentucky" where you "turn around and turn around until you make a stop." Only in my case, it was "...turn around and turn around and---- uh oh."

The "uh oh" was the point where the pack spun off of my body, unclipping the lav mic from my collar. The pack hit the floor and split in two.

Now, it could have been a lot worse. It could have hit a kid. Or a parent. Or a grandparent. It didn't. It just hit the floor. But I didn't think of that. I simply stared at the casualty that had resulted from my enthusiastic spinning.

I picked up the microphone and a dad in the front row promptly leapt to his feet as well. I turned on the mic and it still worked. Fortunately, the pack had broken where it was designed to; the cover had just come off. But there was a latch on the pack and I couldn't put it back on my own. I had decided to clip the pack to my guitar strap and keep going and deal with the problem later. But this dad was determined to help me, bless him. He fiddled with the pack and I watched over his shoulder as my audience started to leave.

"It's OK, it's OK," I said, "I'll fix it later."

He insisted he could do it. So I waited as he slid the pieces back together and returned the pack to me. I continued with the set, praying that the families who had left would be replaced with more. I did a few songs with hand claps and when I picked up the guitar again, I clipped the pack to the strap.

It lasted for three or four more songs. Then, as I was asking the children if their ears hung low, my microphone decided to do just that. It dropped and shattered again, in the same place.

Engineer Dad to the rescue - he decided to concoct a system where the pack would be firmly attached to the guitar strap. I saw people begin to leave again, so I improvised a few verses of "Ears" as he worked. Seriously - made 'em up on the spot. "Can you clap your hands, can you clap them on your head..." Not too bad, considering the circumstances. (Engineer Dad was still standing to my left, holding the mic to my face as he twisted the cord around.)

When the mic was finished, I decided to go on to another hand-clapping song. Which is when I discovered that I couldn't put the guitar down. The cord was wrapped around the strap. That's where it starts to get blurry. Flustered and embarrassed, I tried to control my wavering voice, at the same time as I attempted to figure out whether or not the microphone was actually working. And at the same time as I prayed that the parents in the back weren't thinking, "What's wrong with this person??"

This happened less than a week ago - last Saturday, to be specific. It's almost funny by now. And it already makes a good performance-disaster story. (Right?) At the time, I wanted to find a nice little hole to hide in for a few hundred years... but I'm getting over it.

And heck - it's kind of like a badge of honor or something. A kind of rite of passage, if you will.

Not at all proof that I forgot all about that silly thing called gravity.