I Take it Back! I Take it ALL back!

Remember that time we debuted a new song at the Marin Arts festival and Janet said all I needed was another year on stage, and then I was all like (insert slightly defensive tone here) "What is she talking about? I'm not nervous! I love to perform! Blah blah blah." OMG. I totally take that all back. Janet is totally right. She may even be wrong about that one year part. Maybe I need two.

Tonight we did a run-through of all the songs with transitions, and although the sequence of songs went ok, it was my solo sections that needed work. Ok (to go off on a tangent here), so I really like deer, because I think they're cool and they're messengers to the gods (in Japanese folklore) and I like the idea that drums are also a way to speak to the gods or the heavens or whatever. Deers are kind of like my theme-animal. Like if you had to choose an animal to represent yourself, then for me, it would be a deer. But you all know that when deers are suddenly faced with the blinding headlights of a Ford F150 on a dark country road, it's not uncommon for the deer to suddenly freeze in its tracks and either react and jump the @$*# out of the way, or get run over. Tonight I got run over. Or maybe partially run over. It was like I knew what my solos were supposed to be, but my hands were not clued in on it. It was the pressure. All the other E'ville members were there, so it was like we had a mini-audience, but I cracked. I'm so frustrated and actually, I'm frightened. If I can't perform in front of our own members, how am I going to perform in front of a whole crowd of strangers?

I think my plan of action is to just go through my set solos and just drill and drill and drill until my hands get the clue on what the @$*# I'm supposed to be playing. So it becomes automatic and actually, part of the song--for me anyway.

Oh, and another song we've been working hard and long on, Kaito Ryu, is in peril. I can play it 90% of the time, meaning I can play the song with 90% accuracy. Like maybe I'll forget to play 8 beats instead of 6, but if everyone else is ok, then overall we do ok. But there are other people who are like maybe 75%, or who get thrown off when someone else messes up, and then it just goes into train-wreck mode and we stop. I keep begging them not to stop when they mess up, but it just becomes apparent that it's time to stop. I stand behind Janet who I know has her spots of mistakes, and she knows when I have my mess-up points, and she plays next to Susan who has her moments of mistakes, and it's like we all feed off each other--making mistakes until we get derailed. But we've fought so hard to get that song to sound right and to sound good, and we just keep getting butts kicked. It may get cut.

Sigh. OMG. Sigh. Ok, I thought I wasn't going to do this, but let's check the calendar.

9 days.

That's do-able, right? If all I need to do is polish my solos for say, (realistically) 5 hours a day (in between working on applications for you know, my real job), times 9 days, is 45 hours, 45 hours of solo honing. I have 3 solos I am realistically going to work on, so that comes out to 15 hours a solo, so that's a long time, and I can do that. Right? 15 hours? I'm not going to ask who am I kidding, because that would be a waste of time, so hey--I'm going to give it my best.

And just to reiterate. Janet was right. I was wrong. So I'm going to work on my solos.

For a year.