I love that line from the 30 Rock pilot, when Tracy Jordan first makes his appearance on The Girly Show set and Jack Donaghy is trying to appease all his whims.
I relate to this nonsense in an interesting way. I started piano lessons around the age of 10, and by 14 I had started my first band.Ā I recall my band’s first live performance at a high school talent show. It may have been junior high as I was in the 9th grade. Before we went on stage, we were discussing how to not be nervous out there, and to look out at a spot along the back wall of the auditorium or something. When the curtain opened and I saw the full auditorium of kids, with teachers standing along the walls and in the back, I felt exhilarated. There was no nervousness at all. In that particular band I played bass and sang lead vocal, so I was right up front. During one of the guitar solos, I looked over at our lead guitarist and he yelled to me, “I’m screwing my solo up” because of nerves. Just never happened to me.
At a high school battle of the bands several years later, we did three songs (an ELP influenced version of Peter Gunn, a cover of Deep Purple’s The Mule complete with drum solo, and The Who’s Eminence Front) and had quite a good night. We ended up winning the “battle,” but more relevant to the topic at hand, after our set we were in high demand as other high schoolers kept coming up to us to talk about the band, the guitar we smashed on stage (that was a neat trick we pulled. I had an old guitar with a bent neck that wouldn’t stay in tune. During the drum solo in The Mule, our guitarist swapped out his guitar for mine, and at the end of the song smashed it to bits ala Pete Townshend), and our general awesomeness. Some kids walked up to me to ask how I learned how to play like Keith Emerson–which is an amazing compliment–and I recall saying something very briefly without ever looking at them or breaking stride.
I got my first professional gig at age 19, playing keyboards for a Top 40 band in Miami and we played in front of large crowds every weekend, with smaller ones on the weekdays. I enjoyed the attention from the audience and fed off the energy on the nights when it was all working. However, I never wanted any attention when I got off the stage. I didn’t want anyone coming up to me to talk to me or ask me questions.
Much later in life, when my dreams of making a living in music perished, I had a long corporate career where I moved up through the management ranks, mostly on my smarts, skills and work ethic. I loved to have my accomplishments acknowledged, but I didn’t want to be personally acknowledged if that makes any sense. For example, I’d love to know people read my monthly reports, or acknowledged that my team got great results, but I didn’t want anyone to talk to me about my report or call me to ask about the team’s performance. It was just like performing music. I want my work product to get attention, not me.
This has carried on in all aspects of my life. When I started blogging, I wanted to see that people were reading my posts, and comments were fine, but preferably they were comments about the writing or the content, not directed at me specifically, requiring me to answer. In the gym, I always have headphones on and most of the time I wear a hat pulled down low so I had to work at it if I wanted to see anyone else. I joked that if I couldn’t see anyone, then no one could see me. I wanted to train without anyone looking me in the eye. But if I posted pics or videos from the workout, I certainly wanted people to see them.
On social media, I tried to be anonymous by creating various names to be able to post freely without ever having to worry about talking to someone about it. When I had enough material together where I felt like I could self publish a book, I did it under a pseudonym and I occasionally look at the Amazon ratings and read some of the reviews. But very few people know I actually wrote it.
On occasion though, and this occured recently, I want to rid myself of the need to hide and not have anyone look me in the eye, and just be. On social media at the moment, I am using my own name, posting what I like, and even linking my blog, YouTube channel and the rest for all the world to see. We’ll see how long that lasts! But again, I don’t really want to talk about what I’m posting or writing. I want the work to speak for itself. I suppose I am still a performer at heart, not very far removed from that 9th grader who looked out a room filled with people and joyously sang my heart out, only to quickly leave when our set was done. Don’t look Mr. Jordan in the eye.
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