Music has always been more than just a little bit significant to me. 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 a real city, I mean Fort
Smith. Arkansas. I grew up in Charleston, about 20 miles or so east of Ft. Smith.
After a horrifying audition of sorts, my new piano instructor told my parents that
she’d take me on as a student, but I would have to learn from the beginning
because I’d been 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) were definitely in the performing arts area, but rather than a musician, I
wanted to be an actor. Yet when I began college I joined the choir and began
voice lessons and continued piano lessons. The degree I spent half of my time in
college pursuing was, however, 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 still
just a phase). By the time I was 24, I had two degrees in theatre (bachelor and
master of arts).
It would be better said, I think, that performance has been quite significant to me,
beginning at a 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: as puppeteer; a trumpeter on the football field, in an
orchestra and in a jazz band; as 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.
It wasn’t until I was in my 40’s that I began to realize that I had suffered (and
continue to) from 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withdrawn from being a performance artist of any kind. In my early 30’s, I delved
into poetry, started a magazine, and continue writing it to this day (here I am
doing so, as a matter of fact). It was around then that I also began thinking of
myself as primarily an artist, though I knew to keep my day job, of course.
Of all of the types of performers I have been, playing the piano has by far 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).
