Show Day. Where Hopie will first unload all her insecurities in an act of cleansing before getting clear about what’s really going on.
I think I might have pink eye as does one of my sons so I’m going to get drops this morning at the clinic as I imagine having to play the show tonight in sunglasses to camouflage my big swollen puffy right eye. I don’t have anything to wear looking in my closet at all the dresses I never wear sporting the thinnest layer of dust along the shoulder hanger form hanging silent in a row like flimsy statues behind a display case with a warning, ‘do not touch’ like an installation art piece turned in by a lazy sophomore who just grabbed whatever he could find on the morning the project was due. He called it, “My mom’s closet” and, thanks to Mom’s self-doubt and sadness, he ended up getting an A and hailed as the chief master of slacker genius by his sophomore cohorts securing his mark in high school lore forever.
All I have are these songs. Do you know how many years I agonized over writing the best song possible? Did you know that once that desperation faded it made way for a dissatisfied peace that says, “what you hoped for does not exist so now what?” Now what? I just have the songs I have and wonder what kind of magic I’ve been missing this whole time that would have shepherded me into the place where the best songs live. Am I crazy to have wanted a place near Joni, Bob, Kris, and Dolly? I wanted it. I still do. I love songwriting so much that I thought if I worked hard enough and long enough that maybe I could occupy the nosebleeds rows above where the masters were and count myself among the writers. On Show day I wish I had better stuff to offer. On show day I wonder why I didn’t work harder.
On Show day I tell myself stuff like, “Now don’t sing too loud, but don’t sing too soft. You know you’re too loud, tone it down. Stop trying to get them to like you. Stop acting so desperate. Now you know you talk too much, don’t talk too much. Now you know you’re bad at remembering things and tonight you have to remember things.” On show day my brain has a very long list of things I imagine Anais’ brain never even considers. I imagine Brandi and Lori and Jason and Chris say, “Warriors get braver and chickens stay chicken. So which one are you cuz the world ain’t got time to hold your hand.”
And I pipe up, “I want to be a warrior, but I don’t have anything to wear and my right eye is oozing and there’s money on the line and I don’t want to be a bad bet. I want to be a warrior but I’ve got limited time to switch from mother/parent/peasant/mortal and change into my armor.” Any thought on how to do that?
And they just look at me, then look down at the floor and shake their heads just like kind frustrated people do when confronted by the complexities of amateur hour. And they say, “Girl, ain’t nobody got time to give all their guts to the list of worries and think they’ll have anything left over for the thing they really love the most. So you can split your time between the House of Pro and the House of Woe if you want to, but that’s not doing you any favors. It’s show day so I think it’s high time you start acting like it.”
Acting like it. Yes. It’s show day so can I start acting like I’m the star of the show? Yes I can. Have I been prepping for this show? Yes, yes I have. Ok. So let’s go over what we already know.
I know I love to play a show. I know I’ve been working to make this the best show possible. I know these songs mean a lot to me and I want to sing them. I want to give listeners a chance to hang out with them. I know I like hanging out with them in my basement all alone so maybe it’ll be even better under the lights and on the mic. The last thing I want that audience to remember are my clothes or whether my right eye was inflamed so I’m going to do what I have to do to make sure music stays center stage.
I can walk away proud of myself at the end of the night or I can walk away with a laundry list of criticisms and shortfalls. I can pack up my gear with the joy of playing music running through my veins or I can pack up my gear disappointed that I didn’t deliver. Which one of those scenarios would I like to come true? Where would I like to place my marbles? Into which jar will the warrior place her marbles, everyone? It’s show day. Let’s put on a show.