Throughout the summer, here in Cedar Falls, IA, the city offers several Friday night “Movies Under the Moon,” located in the downtown located Overman Park, proceeded by a series of short performances hosted by the Cedar Valley Acoustic Guitar Association. Local performing treasure and co-founder of the Association, Rick Vanderwall urged me to play and I somewhat reluctantly agreed to perform for my assigned 15 minutes on August 9, 2019.
I practice quite a bit daily and my guitar playing is slowly improving; however, playing before a crowd can only be prepared for by previous experience of which I have little. I’ve played (the less formal) open mic nights at a local coffee shop and experienced complete dissociation of my fingers from my brain, but that circumstance has reduced in likelihood as I’ve gain confidence by performing several times. On the other hand, open mic night is different from playing before a large expectant crowd so I have now some serious trepidation…
The advantage of performing publicly is that it raises the stakes in terms of my relationship with the guitar. We are in it together and practice is taken more seriously. In the same vein, the performance forces me to take myself more seriously as a musician, which has long term implications. This is not a painless process, but as they say, “if it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger.” See you next Friday night…