Something other than nervousness
The day before a big gig...
At our town’s inaugural literary festival tomorrow I have two slots: the first is a performance of my poetic monologue, Crash, which made its debut at the Ripon Theatre Festival last year; the second is a less formal series of readings and conversation which starts about an hour after the former finishes.
In Wednesday’s local newspaper the event was front page news, with a further page inside outlining the programme, including:
‘Excited’ is precisely the word!
And so today is the day before. The calm before the storm. I have work I could be doing on the in-progress draft of my latest project - but it’s difficult to find the motivation…
I’m sure this isn’t nerves. I really don’t feel nervous. I’ve rehearsed an awful lot over the last four weeks and so am in as good a shape as I can possibly be; no last-minute panic needed. I guess I just want today to be tomorrow.
This time tomorrow I’ll be setting up the ‘stage’ for Crash, getting changed and ready. The things I need for the reading afterwards (in a different location) will have been dropped off. And I know, as soon as I walk to the stage and the audience goes quiet and I utter those first few words, the journey for the next three hours will be pretty much set; I’ll just need to relax and enjoy it. Because it will be over in a flash.
Perhaps it’s simply anticipation, this pre-event lethargy.
So today I’ll spend the majority of my time trying not to think, probably watching too much sport - Wimbledon, the Tour de France, the Euros - simply to get to this time tomorrow as ‘quickly’ as possible…
Break a leg