Like Real People Do

1

I had always gotten nervous before performing. Not because of the amount of people in the audience, not because of the crowds of people all looking at me, I could really care less what the masses of people who would never see me again thought of how I played.

My problem came from those I did know. My friends, family, peers and professors, all in the audience, watching me. And while I knew that everyone was there to support me and that it wouldn't matter how I did, I always felt this nagging, urgent need to please those in every audience who knew me personally. Something about the idea of messing up in front of people who I had to see again tomorrow made every hair on my body stand on edge. It gave me goosebumps that rose starting at my fingertips and spread themselves up my arms, down my back, shooting through my legs. The anxiety of it all was suffocating, I could feel it wrapping around my neck, choking me. Tightening with every single breath I took, my fear tightened itself around my whole body making it harder and harder to breathe.

I wasn't even backstage yet, and still every nerve in my body was at attention. I was shaking.

Tonight especially needed to go off without a hitch. If anything went wrong, it potentially meant the death of everything I had been working toward for over half of my life. My career as a soloist would never get the chance to blossom into something influential the way I had always imagined it.

I had become quite well known in the surrounding area for my performances at state competitions during high school. This had resulted in my being recruited by a music conservatory in Europe, and eventually, contacted by the director of the London Symphony Orchestra. They wanted me, a 22 year old kid who was still stressing over their senior recital pieces to perform as a featured soloist for their ensemble. Naturally, I was terrified but I took the offer. At the time I hadn't thought so much about the amount of people in the audience and ensemble who had the power to completely alter the course of my life, for better or for worse.

Looking down at the time, I realize I have about 20 minutes until it was time to be onstage.

I sigh quietly and muster up the courage to finally tune my cello and run through the more difficult parts of the piece I was to play.

In reality, I had practiced the damn thing into oblivion. I could play the whole thing upside down and backwards with my eyes closed if I had to but my nerves were getting the best of me.

What if I don't play with enough emotion

What if I don't exaggerate the dynamics enough

What if I fuck the entire thing up so badly out of nerves that I'm unable to recover and the whole performance would have been better off had I just not shown up

A million thoughts of everything that could possibly go wrong were passing through my mind all at once and before I knew it, it was time to go.

One of the biggest points of critique I knew I was going to get. Tonight was of the way I had chosen to dress. It's always been standard that, as a soloist, I was supposed to be wearing a dress. Being a woman in music was weird like that, Men could really wear whatever they wanted as long as it was formal, and though dressing overly feminine and wearing dresses always made me uncomfortable, a long, formal dress was almost always expected of me. I never wore one of course, which had been an incredible point of tension between a few of my professors (Who had referred to my state of dress after every performance as "Rude and unprofessional") and I during my first year or two of college. I had opted for a suit tonight. All black with a blindingly white button up and a maroon tie.

I could feel my nerves begin to spike even higher than they had been before the second I walked backstage. The whole ensemble was already out on the stage, all sitting perfectly straight as the director began telling the story of how he had discovered me.