Plucking it from the jaws of death.
Shows like tonight are a great example of why I play music, and why it can be so frustratingly difficult to stay committed to it.
Some really great music happened tonight (at Guitar Circle Sundays!). This was not, by any means, a magical night, but there were moments that were really quite impressive. There is a drama that can transform any part of a show (or our lives), but riding that hazard without being marginalized by it is tricky.
The secret word is "hazard". In my experience, that moment of not knowing what is going to happen next but having to commit and trust anyway--in other words, the moment in which faith is born--is the moment which decides how the gig goes. This is practically different from a moment of true mastery, when one is in absolute control of what happens*. Instead, this is the moment of extended freefall that we're talking about.
There were several spots in the show that were like this: a couple of improvisational moments, Bicycling to Afghanistan, the Bartok homage to Bach from the Mikrokosmos, the sudden emergence of Larks' Thrak at far too fast a speed for me to play (and yet my hands immediately began to play it exactly like that), Love Is Green, pretty much every circulation we played. A couple of times (Bicycling comes to mind), it was pretty clear that someone was making a mistake. The saving grace, though, was that instead of falling flat on our face, we were able to land on our feet almost every time, tonight. Not mastery by a long shot, but a well-played show.
And yet we played for two people. Even the band that was loudly rehearsing in the basement of the space was too busy trying to arrange "Autumn Leaves" to break for an hour to see us. It's not accurate to say that it's a little humiliating, but it does make me feel disappointed.
We just aren't promoting enough. And that's a bit of a bummer, because we all just seem too busy for "enough", even when we really need to be at "more than others".
*There are some who would argue that a master is not in control of what happens, so much as he/she is completely free and able to stay out of the way. I am inclined to agree.