I’ve been at the School of Rock Broomfield, CO location since the beginning of this year. Yesterday was the summer season’s end season show, and all day yesterday before the show I was super anxious.
I ended up just going to the gym to go for a run because just sitting there waiting was driving me insane. I didn’t want to go over the songs and keep singing in case I exhausted my voice in the attempts, and I knew I’d done plenty of practice that it would be overkill at this point.
I was mainly worried about forgetting lyrics. Some of the songs we were covering were really important to me, and I wanted to do right by them. One of them was Lateralus by Tool, which is my favorite song by one of my favorite bands. I did end up making a mistake on the song – I was counting a section that repeats right after the second verse that toggles through 9/8, 8/8, and 7/8 time signatures. After the 3rd loop, right on the 1 beat, I would normally come in with “Feed my will to feel this moment!” – this time I was so focused on counting and making sure I sang at the right spot that I totally blanked on the lyrics and just mumbled some words to get back to the area I knew.
I was also super nervous and could tell my voice was shaky and a little pitchy from the nervousness. My mouth was dry and downing water didn’t help. It was just something I’d have to push through.
We made it through the song. To the crowd, we were great. To a Tool fan, we were terrible. But I am still grateful to have the experience, and it’s made me reflect on some of the anxiety.
Two takeaways from that day – the first is that anxious and excited feel very similar. That jittery feeling in your heart when you’re excited about doing something versus when you’re anxious about something land in a very similar space in my body. I think I reflected before the show that earlier in the year at my first show I was probably 100% nerves, no excitement. This time I was probably 50% nervous and 50% excited, but so used to that jittery feeling always being anxiety that it masked that I was also excited and itching to sing what I had been practicing, too.
The other takeaway is that this anxiety, this self-doubt that I would goof up or forget the lyrics or whatever – that’s all on me. If somebody else doubts me I want to prove them wrong, but if I doubt me sometimes I listen to me, and I think I need to work on that. I don’t need to be another obstacle against my own progress.
And as I’m typing this, I guess there’s a third takeaway. I forgot the lyrics, which was one of my biggest fears on stage. And while that sucked, it didn’t suck nearly as bad as I was dreading it would. So in a way I’m happy it happened so I’m not so worried about forgetting the lyrics for the first time. Maybe it needed to happen for me to move past the fear. Live shows have mistakes, it’s all good.
Anyway, here’s us giving it our best shot. Over-thinking and over-analyzing really do separate the body from the mind: