Dream 6

Well, I had the worst nightmare: performing and screwing it up like never before.

I somehow found myself at the old Myles of Beans cafe where I used to perform.  In my dream, it was the last day, before the cafe closed (it’s closed now.  I don’t know why…) and I was invited by Wes, the resident musician in charge of open mic nights.  He invited me up to the stage and I sat down at the piano with my back to the audience (which you’re not supposed to do and even in real life, the piano was turned sideways so people could see you).  So there I sat, staring at the wall with the audience behind me while I talked into the mic about random things and the people behind me laughed as if I were a comedian.

This went on for a few minutes until I realized what I was there to do: play music.  So I said, “I should better get playing” and proceeded to play a song (I don’t remember which one).  But there wasn’t a mic for me to sing into and my words were barely heard over the piano.  So I suddenly stopped playing and asked Wes if I could get a mic which was nearby.  He gave it to me and I started playing again and for whatever reason, I kept screwing up everything: the piano, the words, the singing.  Everything was going wrong, not to mention it seemed to take me forever to finish the song.

Finally, I was done but I still wanted to play one song well to show everyone that I wasn’t some idiot.  Out of all my songs, I figured I knew how to play “Goodbye Spain” the best (also I had just played it a few hours before I went to bed).  So I did that, except somehow the microphone was on the other side of the piano again and I just thought, “Fuck it!  I’ll sing without the mic” and proceeded to then sing-shout the song overtop of the piano.

That’s all I remember.  God, I hope that doesn’t actually happen to me.  *shudder*

10 Defining Moments of My Life (so far) — #7: Music

7.  I had managed to snag my friend to come along with me to this coffee shop in Burnaby I had never been to.  I phoned earlier to ask about signup times and was told that it started at 8:00.  We both got there at around 7:30, in awe of the small setting and the music equipment on stage.  My friend saw this chalkboard of times and told me to sign up for a time.  I wrote my name down for 8:20, the first act after the host played at 8:00.  The waiting and anticipation was incredibly hard to handle.  My friend was extremely nervous, for both of us, as we didn’t know what would happen.  Finally, when my time rolled around, I was called to the stage.  Because the café already had a piano there, and most people that performed were guitarists, the host asked me, “Are you doing spoken word?” to which I shook my head and pointed to the wooden piano.  After I played my 20 minutes, I received positive comments by a few audience members and I was filled with such humility and I genuinely felt like a real musician, despite always being told from my family that I sucked at everything.