Music has always been more than just a little bit significant to me. I’m guessing most people, if you asked, would say the same about music’s influence on them. I took lessons at piano for twelve years, starting in the second grade. After two years, my parents, sensing that the piano and I were quite the pair, took me to a more selective instructor in the city. By city, I don’t mean city, I mean Fort Smith. Arkansas. I grew up in Charleston, about 20 miles or so east. Of the city. After a horrifying audition of sorts, my new piano instructor told my parents that she’d take me on as a student, but that, if she were to become my piano teacher, I’d have to begin learning from scratch because up to that point I had playing by ear. She was my piano teacher for over eight years. By the time I graduated from high school, my ambitions (which I kept to myself, mostly; long familiar story, I’m sure) were definitely in the performing arts area. But I’d moved on, mostly, from being a musician to becoming an actor. However, when I began undergraduate college I joined the choir, began taking voice (singing) lessons and signed up for piano lessons. The degree I had opted to pursue during this time, however, was that of a bachelor of arts in chemistry. Theater would come later, even though it also would just be a phase (like playing the piano, quite a long one, and entirely purposeful, as far as I have ever been concerned; but it was still, a phase). By the time I was 24, I had two degrees in theatre (a B.A. and an M.A.). I had, by then, begun experiencing occasional vertigo, which was sometimes severe, and would continue off and on for at least a couple of decades. And a year after that, I was prescribed an anti-depressant for the first time (Prozac).
It would be better said, I think, that performance has been very significant to me, beginning at a very young age (my role from age 3 to 5 was that of an ADULT; I rarely ate at the kids’ table on holidays, and my persistence at this role was, I am most certain, exhausting to the adult relatives in my family, most of whom would play along enough that I never thought otherwise). I have had the delight of performing in many ways. I’ve been a puppeteer; a trumpeter on the field, in an orchestra and in a jazz band; I’ve been piano accompanist for a second grade performance of The Nutcracker and for Brahms’ amazing Liebeslieder Waltzes , a four hands on one piano extravaganza, on tour with my college choir; I’ve had roles in dozens of theatrical productions; I’ve directed choir at church; sung and played piano at weddings and funerals; the list goes on and on. If you’ll kindly bear with me, I believe you might inevitably find that I do have a point in here somewhere. That there is a rhyme and a reason.
Also, I am a Gemini. To the core.
It wasn’t until I was in my 40’s that I began to realize that I had suffered (and continue to) from pretty severe social anxiety. Some fairly severe panic attacks (and several therapists and physicians), quite the rage for me that decade, helped me come to this realization. Even by 40, though, I had been a decade almost completely withdrawn from being a performance artist of any kind. So to speak. In my early 30’s, I delved into poetry, became one, started a magazine, and continue writing to this day (here I am, as a matter of fact). It was then that I also began thinking of myself as primarily an (even though I grew up and spent most of my life relatively poor or lower middle class, I had always handled the rent-paying part of life just fine with my other long-term career, that of being an executive assistant – thanks especially to being a Gemini, I have even enjoyed and taken pride in that necessary part of my life; but it cannot be denied that I am, above all else, an) artist.
It wasn’t until I was in my 40’s that I began to realize that I had suffered (and continue to) from pretty severe social anxiety. Some fairly severe panic attacks (and several therapists and physicians), quite the rage for me that decade, helped me come to this realization. Even by 40, though, I had been a decade almost completely withdrawn from being a performance artist of any kind. So to speak. In my early 30’s, I delved into poetry, became one, started a magazine, and continue writing to this day (here I am, as a matter of fact). It was then that I also began thinking of myself as primarily an (even though I grew up and spent most of my life relatively poor or lower middle class, I had always handled the rent-paying part of life just fine with my other long-term career, that of being an executive assistant – thanks especially to being a Gemini, I have even enjoyed and taken pride in that necessary part of my life; but it cannot be denied that I am, above all else, an) artist.
Of all of the types of performers I have been, playing the piano has brought me the most fear and panic (when playing at church, for example, the grand piano would be quite visibly shaking along with my shuddering arms as I would play).
