The classroom was warm and stuffy. I stood before the gaggle of high school students in our rehearsal for the school musical, The Music Machine. My legs were shaking and my breath was shallow. I felt like I was under a magnifying glass being viewed by the sea of faces before me back lit by the pale, fluorescent lighting. This was my very first solo.
“In the still, of the niii…ght,” my voice trembled like a building above a speeding subway train.
I continued to sing as the piano music spilled into the room; my face turned red-hot and itchy. I managed to get through the song, but it really sounded like a staccato note on repeat. I could hear people whisper, “She’s so nervous!”
When the song ended, I ran from the front of the room and straight into the bathroom. As I burst into tears, my best friend Julie came in.
“I sounded awful!” I wailed. “How am I going to sing in front of a real audience?”
“This was the first rehearsal. You’ll do better the next time around!” Julie said consolingly.
She was right. The next rehearsal was in the church where the performance would take place. But this time, when I got on stage, the empty pews were darkened, and the spotlight blinded me from the all-seeing eyes. I found myself, through no will of my own, singing with clarity and confidence. The microphone seemed to give me power. I heard my voice echo throughout the sanctuary and it sounded magical. I held the hands of two little girls, my background singers.
“You were so good!” my friend Jodi told me on the school bus ride home. “Your voice didn’t shake at all!”
Then the final night came. I wore a soft-pink, flowing dress and low-heeled pumps. I felt a little nervous, but again, the people’s faces were blackened by the hot spot lights shining on me. The microphone lightened and amplified my voice, and an unknown force came into me and raised me up, giving me a strength and power I had never experienced before. I sang a song about gentleness, and that very word seemed to melt into my limbs.
I was in the zone. If you’ve seen the movie Soul, it explains the zone musicians and artists get into when they’re in it, carrying out their passion. Nothing can stop you. Something for me about being on stage, with a team of musicians, all performing music together, and the energy of the crowd who wants to listen to you. It lifts you to a place you can’t get to without all of it coming together as one. The blackness, the microphone, the spotlights, the music around you…. it all works.
I miss that feeling. It’s been 34 years since that performance. There’s been a few in between now and then. Hopefully I’ll get back to that place soon, shaky legs and all.
blaak sheep 