Over the years, I’ve had a lot of things happen to me on stage – good, bad, and in between.
Recently, I experienced something I knew was possible, but it had never happened to me.
The morning started innocently enough, though a bit on the shaky side.
I had been awake for a period of time in the middle of the night, and even though I eventually went back to sleep, I woke up feeling a bit funny. Like my spirit had been put back into my body slightly sideways, so everything felt a little bit off.
So there was that.
And then there was the other thing, the thing that happened a few minutes before Melissa and I were set to begin. We were doing a talk and music at a Sunday morning service at a Center for Spiritual Living, as we have done many times before.
And on this particular Sunday morning, at this particular Center, my Mean Mentor showed up right before the service was about to start.
I had no idea she was going to be there. I had no idea why she was there. But she was very much there.
My Mean Mentor was one of my teachers in ministerial school. I have tons of admiration for her. She is smart, funny, and a brilliant speaker. She is also scary AF. She can cut you down to size with a glance. Or a word. Or both.
For whatever reason, my Mean Mentor seems to be particularly not fond of me. She loves Melissa. She’s a big fan of her music and will go on and on about how much Melissa and her music have positively impacted her life.
But when I show up? Silence. Glances. Weirdness.
When my Mean Mentor is around, I turn into a little kid. And not in a good way. I’m a little kid who is shy and scared of getting it wrong. “It” being anything I might think, say, or do.
So when I saw my Mean Mentor walk into the sanctuary that Sunday morning, I was freaked out. I already had the shaky thing going, and now I was freaked out as well. But in an incredibly shaky way.
Not a great place to be when you’re about to lead a Sunday morning service.
Nevertheless, everything started well enough. Melissa and I did the opening song and went back to our seats while the host went through the announcements.
As soon as we sat down, I told Melissa about the Mean Mentor. Melissa hadn’t seen her, so she turned around to smile and say Hello. I, on the other hand, did nothing of the sort.
Why would I do that?? I was shaky enough as it was!! I wasn’t going to pour another round of shaky into the vat!!!!
After the announcements were finished, Melissa and I went back up to the stage to do our first musical number, “Love Is the Only Truth.”
Melissa and I have done this song many, many times. The words (that I wrote) are deeply embedded into my psyche.
Or so I thought.
Melissa played the intro to the song on the keyboard. I was supposed to come in after a few measures. But I couldn’t. The words were not in my brain. They had seriously vacated the premises.
Had my Mean Mentor snatched up my words and put them in her purse? It felt like she had. I refused to look at her. It would only make things worse.
I sidled back to Melissa at the keyboard and asked her for the starting lyrics. She gave them to me, but I still couldn’t grasp them. It doesn’t help that the beginning line of both the first and second verse is the same. Also, Melissa didn’t have the complete verse written out on her music, so she could only give me starting words to each measure.
After what was probably only a few seconds, but felt like fourteen hours, I finally recovered the beginning of the verse.
I walked back to my place on stage and began. Fortunately, I made it through the first verse just fine.
But there’s more than one verse! There’s a second verse! And, in this case, my shaky mind decided to scramble up a bunch of words near the end of the second verse. I recovered, and tried to play it off as Not a Big Deal, but it was a Big Deal. I was still seriously thrown off.
And I wasn’t done yet.
At the end of the song, I come back in with the spoken-word chorus at the same time that Melissa is singing the musical chorus. As I do so, I instruct the congregation to come back in with me.
Or do I?
I gave them the cue to join me in the final chorus, but then I totally missed the part where I come in. I just stood there, flailing around inside my shaky head, trying to figure out what to do.
It was like the scared little kid inside me was trying to play jump rope, but they were really, really bad at it. The rope was twirling around and around and around, and my inner kid and I had no idea how to get in there. The whole point of jump rope is to jump! With the rope! But you have to get in there to do it. Yikes!
Finally, I found a place to come back into the song, and the congregation followed me. Only we didn’t say the chorus together very long, because the song was almost over.
But the song was almost over. Praise the Lord!
I still hadn’t looked at my Mean Mentor, because, as previously stated, why would I do that????
Fortunately for me, I had a few minutes to compose myself while Melissa did the first half of our talk. I took some deep breaths. I attempted to put the jump rope and the shaky times behind me.
When it came time for me to get back up on stage, I felt a little better. Doing my talk helped even more, as there’s no specific timing involved with my talk like there is in a song. Usually I don’t even think about that, but this particular morning, I did.
Our second musical number, after our talk, had another spoken word part in it. This time, I prayed myself up as I was waiting to come in. (Spirit, help me get out of my own way!!) The prayer worked, and I got through my part without a hitch.
After the service was over, I was tempted to tell people what had happened. But I’ve learned, over the years, not to do that. It gets in the way of their experience of the service. And, as hard as it is for me to believe, they often haven’t even noticed the mistake.
And the Mean Mentor? She took off right after the service was over. She waved at Melissa as she was leaving.
I still have no idea why she was there, other than to snatch up the words to my song and be scary AF.
On our way home from the gig, I talked things out with Melissa. I marveled at what had happened. I had heard about people blanking out on stage, I knew it was possible, but I had never experienced it before.
As part of our debrief, Melissa and I use a technique we got from Louise Hay.
Before we turn our attention to what went “wrong,” we look at all the things that went well. After we have listed alllllll the things we feel good about, then and only then do we turn our attention to the areas in need of improvement. This allows us to see the mistakes and problems in context. It’s a great technique, and it’s helped me immeasurably over the years.
Except everything about that morning seemed to be different and weird, and my reaction to my song mishap was no exception.
It helped that Melissa said she hadn’t noticed my second verse stumblings. She also said the beginning of the song was not a big deal. And coming in late at the end wasn’t that bad either. But still. I was having a hard time letting it go.
It wasn’t until the next day, while I was meditating, that I figured out what to do. I was using the Louise Hay method on the service as a whole, but the enormity of my stumbling was overshadowing all the good in the rest of the service.
So I decided to apply the Louise Hay technique to the song itself.
I forced myself to list all the things that had gone right within the song.
When I couldn’t remember the words to the first verse, I went to Melissa for help. And when I wasn’t able to receive her help at first, I stayed there until I got what I needed. When I messed up the words to the second verse, I acted like nothing had gone wrong. Indeed, I leaned into my performance and pretended like I was really into it, even though I was totally thrown off. I was able to find my way into the final chorus, even with the jump rope issue, and again I acted like everything was fine.
Somehow, burrowing into the song itself and extracting all the positive aspects of the mistakes did the trick.
I stared down the belly of the rattled, memory-deficient, jump-rope-challenged beast, and I emerged with a perspective I’d been unable to find when I treated the beast as part of a larger whole. I needed to deal with the beast itself.
Doing so allowed me to see that I was able to deliver a majority of the song with the right words and on time. It was my first experience of blanking on stage, and I handled it just fine.
A key component of live performance is its unpredictability. That’s one of the things that can make it so exciting. And yet, as a performer, you don’t want that unpredictability to unsettle your performance. This is true on stage and in life. Staying centered and present goes a long way.
I’m not lining up for more major mishaps on stage, but I know that if and when they happen, I’ll get through it. And I’ll have a way to process it afterwards.
In the meantime, I’ll be reviewing my words before a performance a little more carefully. And practicing my jump rope.
Anything can happen on stage. Good, bad, and in between.
I want to be ready.
What about you! What’s your experience with staying present through mishaps – on stage or in life? Share your comments below!
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