A quick post about my open stage performance at song school. There are 180 students here and not enough performance slots for the nightly open stage for everyone so getting in is a lottery. This year I didn’t make it in initially, but I was second on the waitlist, and as people with second thoughts withdrew they filled slots. So ended up with one Wednesday night. Luckily (unlike some people who get their slots at the last minute if someone who doesn’t show up at the appointed time) I knew from Monday night that I had a slot. So I was able to draft Maggie Wing, the first person I met at my very first song school, to sing harmony with me. I decided to sing I Was Here (the song inspired by graffiti in New York), because it’s a song that people frequently remark on when I play it at a performance. I did have some second thoughts about doing that one because it doesn’t fit the model of songs I’ve been working with in many of my classes this week, but since Maggie had already been drafted for harmony I couldn’t really swap out at the last minute. I did not turn out my best performance – oddlly, considering that I play this song a lot, I screwed up on the chords in the first verse, though I think I recovered reasonably well (and just kept singing) and few people probably remembered the flubs by the end of the song. Two interesting things, though. The first is that one of the instructors made a comment in class earlier in the week that when someone comes up to compliment you on a performance the worst thing to do is to say anything negative (really, to say anything other than graciously acknowledging it). We’re tempted to respond by saying something like “oh no; my voice was terrible tonight” or “yeah, but too bad I forgot the lyrics to that song,” Which not only isn’t accepting the compliment; it’s invalidating the experiences of the person giving it, who probably did genuinely enjoy the performance. So as I got off the stage and people came up to me to tell me how much they’d like my performance, I kept that wisdom in mind and just graciously thanked them. And, honestly, it felt way better than what my usual response would have felt like. The other observation comes from a comment Amy Speace made in a performance class in a previous year. She said that if you’re a songwriter and you get off the stage and people say “nice job” or tell you what a lovely voice you have, you’ve failed at your job of songwriter. While that might be an overstatement, the broader point is a good one; we want to perform so that people pay attention to our songs, and if they’re commenting on other things, they aren’t noticing the important part (and we have not created a performance where that happens). Every since she made that comment I’ve been paying attention to what people say within their compliments. Certainly a few people said (supportive song school) things like “great job!” after I finished. But both shortly after the performance, and especially the next day people kept coming up to me to tell me specific things that they liked about the song. Someone who works at a homeless mission said that she thought that the sentiment of the chorus fit perfectly for the kinds of down-and-out people she works with. Someone when I was waiting in line for my festival wristband starting talking about how much he loved the specific images (and he remembered exactly what they were) in the third verse. And I’ve been hearing similar specific things all day. So I’m counting that as a successful performance.