Doing my thing onstage at Hotel Chelsea. I'm not sure how I seem to be looking up into the lens for this pic, but SL is a strange and mysterious place. Photo by Kat.
No, I can't actually see you. That would be super weird. Also, I don't want to see you, reader. I envision you as an amorphous blob of humanity, with no physical characteristics or gender. Once I start imagining you as a specific person, or even a generalized type of person, I start writing to appease your sense of what you might find interesting, alienating everyone else in the process.
So no, you are no particular person to me. You're just someone who either reads this blog regularly, mostly for my daily Random News bullets, or you wandered here purposefully or by accident via some link or a search term, or you're one of my stalkers -- I have accumulated a number of them over the course of my life, be they ex-lovers or former friends and coworkers, or (frighteningly) strangers who developed some obsession with me even with little or no previous interaction. And even to you, I say, welcome, and hopefully you enjoy whatever I'm about to write.
Aren't We Here to Read About Your Show at Hotel Chelsea?
Yes, of course we'll get to that eventually, and the show was really good and had some interesting things happen there that I do want to mention. But that can wait a minute.
I mean, we could just talk about the show. That would be what normal people would do. Photo by Kat.
Instead, I want to talk about fear. No specific kind of fear; there are many subcategories. There's basic anxiety which comes in many forms and ranges from mild and temporary bad feelings to full-blown debilitating panic attacks. There's your typical aversion, where you consciously avoid something that causes you stress and negative emotions, or create excuses for yourself to avoid something without acknowledging that it scares you. There's the type of fear where, through your own experiences or instincts, you recognize some incoming situation of danger.
Fear is primal, and while it's hard to recognize it in any positive light, fear has a useful side. A person with no fear at all isn't destined to live very long. Fear keeps a species from going extinct; if you don't have some well-founded fear that a predator is going to hunt and eat you, you don't develop the survival skills that allow you to live and thrive and procreate and continue your lineage. You go extinct without fear.
It's usually not fun to be scared, but a healthy dose of fear might be why you exist.
Is Most Fear Positive?
No, definitely not. Most fears are extremely limiting factors in the ability to have a happy and productive life. Here's a low-key example: I'm a live performing musician. Most people need to overcome a natural fear of being judged before they find the nerve to get up onstage in front of people and sing, or play an instrument, or dance, or give speeches, or act. Every person you've ever seen doing any kind of performance-based art has had to overcome their fears at some point.
And that's a case where the fear is understandable in its origin. We all know people who have legitimate phobias, where the fear itself is seemingly uncontrollable, irrational, and can last a lifetime. That person might even be you, with an irrational fear of social settings, of heights, of open or closed spaces, of flying, of germs, and any number of common related afflictions.
All fears can have a huge negative impact on a person's ability to enjoy life and to be part of a society where we all need each other to function at our collective peak.
I don't think this stock art woman actually looks afraid. She looks like a happy person pretending to be afraid. Most people are capable of recognizing true fear in others.
So How Do I Overcome Fear?
What, you thought I was going to give you answers here? No, it's not something where you read a sentence on some random guy's blog and everything is solved. I will tell you a couple of things that have been helpful to me.
One is an understanding of what fear actually is, having developed per above in a "fight or flight" response. If a hungry saber-toothed tiger enters your cave and wants to have you for lunch, your options are simple: fight that motherfucker, or escape from it. Either way, your body reacts in ways that are beneficial to these tasks. The autonomic and sympathetic nervous systems react before you have a chance to really analyze your options, filling you with various hormones and increasing heart rate and blood flow, especially to the muscle, heart, and brain tissues. That stuff gives you better chance of survival.
There are times when fear seems overwhelming and unconquerable. It's usually not, but it sure seems that way at the moment.
And you can thank your distant ancestors, because if they weren't successful in making good use of these added powers, they got eaten, their genes weren't passed along, and you don't exist right now. Anyway, once you become aware that the horrible sensations you recognize as fear are actually your body trying to help you out, you become less concerned about the fear and anxiety itself.
Why Are We Talking About This?
Because I think fear is the cause of the biggest problems faced by humanity. Fear of differences between people -- different races, genders, ethnicities, religions, sexual orientations, economic classes -- cause a huge amount of conflict. I'd actually offer my opinion that fear is the basis for nearly all of the world's religions. You are afraid to die, and unlike many fears, this is one that's guaranteed to eventually happen. So how do you assuage this fear? By buying into a story that after you die, you get to live again in some other plane of existence.
So having a world where fear is preempted by logic and understanding would be preferable to me. I don't generally live based on fictional sayings or codes, but I do find comfort in the statement about fear from William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar...
“A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once. It seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.”
And while we're doing fiction, let's go super geek and invoke the Bene Gesserit litany against fear from Frank Herbert's Dune franchise...
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
And I actually used that shit, back in my 20s and early 30s when I was prone to bouts of free-floating anxiety. And then I stirred in a little logic by recognizing that within a short while, I usually got past periods of anxiety by just waiting them out. If I could just get through 10-15 minutes of things being really shitty, I found I was pretty much fine afterwards. So that's what I did, and it worked.
I'll leave this topic as such: there are very understandable reasons why we have similar fears, because we've seen what happens to so many other people. Fear of illnesses and injuries. Fear of poverty. Fear of discrimination. Fear of losing the abilities to do the things you love. And yet, in order to lead your best life, you have to find ways to overcome those as well, or at least function in ways that accept those fears and live with them, but not allowing them to be the focus of your life or to stop you from enjoying what little time you have here.
Some things in life are just scary. The meaning of courage has nothing to do with a lack of fear. Instead, it's the willingness to go on despite your fear. Hopefully you have experienced, or will get to experience courage in your own actions. It's a good feeling, getting past your fears.
Um... That Show Though?
Yes, I'm done with my fear observations, so now we can talk about the show. I've been extremely busy with work stuff recently, and yesterday was no exception. Deadlines, meetings, various necessary chores... I had it all going on all day yesterday, and then suddenly it was time for me to log into Second Life and head over to Hotel Chelsea to get onstage and play live music. Doing a show is great for eliminating all the other clutter that bounces around your head on any given day.
And by live, in my case, I do mean live. Most people know I don't do the kind of show where artists use prerecorded material or backing tracks, or even tools like loopers to create a more full-fledged sonic experience. There's nothing wrong with that, by the way; some people do it superbly. It's just not my thing for the solo shows I do. I set up a microphone, I plug in an acoustic-electric guitar, and I play and sing to whomever is in front of me. End of story.
I often mention to my audience that I want them to have a good-ass time. That's better than just a regular good time because there's ass involved. Photo by Kat.
One thing that I do that puts me in the minority of live musicians, in Second Life anyway: I put together sets of songs that tend to stick to a particular vibe, be it musical or topical or emotional or whatever, and that's what people get to hear. I don't take requests. Dong it that way allows me to warm up and be ready to perform those songs to the best of my ability, but it also occasionally has another consequence, if something I play inspires conversation in the audience.
No Fighting on the Dance Floor
At my show -- which was not at all intended to be any kind of political statement -- there was a brief squabble between some audience members. Most of my crowd tends to lean toward the liberal side because that's the people who tend to find enjoyment in the music I make. It's not a purposeful result... it just happens that way.
So last night, as I saw in the chat log from the show afterwards, some folks were chatting about various political topics, and that led to some statements that made some others upset. I'm still not sure how or why it was upsetting -- the conversation seemed fairly innocuous to me -- but the angered party departed from the show in a huff.
You can do whatever you want, but I never invite anyone to attend my show with the intention of making them feel unwelcome. It's the opposite, in fact. But if you squabble with another member of the audience while I've got both hands on a guitar (in reality as well as in the virtual world), I can't do much about that. Hope it all works out for you. Photo by Kat.
There's something I say in my show promo materials each time, and it's "Everyone is welcome." And I mean that. And while I get that there are a lot of angry people out there -- angry for legitimate reasons -- it doesn't help to make people feel unwanted or ridiculed. In fact, it has the opposite effect, further driving people deeper into their ingrained outlooks.
While I can't control my audience or other people's reactions to what happens at the show, I would say that having a peaceful and welcoming environment for all is a step toward positivity for all. Much like my statements about fear above, there's no way to judge what each individual person has experienced, whether they were inspired or traumatized or hypnotized or angered. And especially in a virtual world setting like Second Life, making assumptions about people who don't truly know is never a good idea. It's been a rare occurrence that someone has stormed out of my show angrily, and this wasn't the first time or will it be the last, but I can promise you... they didn't leave because of something I did or said or sang. I'm just the entertainment.
How About the Music?
Yes, that part of the event was very good. I knew before I even started that the show would go well. I was relaxed and confident in the songs I'd chosen. I also had the excitement in knowing that I was going to perform a song by my band They Stole My Crayon that I'd never done previously. It ended up going really well, as did everything else I played.
I also purposefully reached a bit deeper into my repertoire and did a number of songs that I hadn't performed in a long while, ranging from six months ago to ten or more years ago. I do like to keep things fresh for both my regular crowd and for myself. I also pulled out "The Rainbow Connection," a song I tend to do only in June in order to commemorate Pride Month.
Everyone loves Shyla the Super Gecko. In addition to being a friendly and fun person, she does an outstanding job of keeping the events at Hotel Chelsea rolling smoothly, and is a superfan of many types of music and performers. Really one of the best patrons of arts I've met in SL or anywhere else. Photo by Kat.
So that's all I have to say for now. I still enjoy doing live music, after many years of doing so. My first-ever live show was in December 1980 when I was 10 years old, and over the subsequent 45 years, I've done a lot more, and while not all of them were remarkably great or easy to do, I don't regret a single one of them.
Hotel Chelsea set list...
If I Had a Tail (Queens of the Stone Age)
On the Way Home (Buffalo Springfield)
America (Simon & Garfunkel)
Carry Me Ohio (Sun Kil Moon)
Solsbury Hill (Peter Gabriel)
Fire & Rain (James Taylor)
Peaceful Easy Feeling (Eagles)
*Snakes And Ladders (They Stole My Crayon)
The Weight (The Band)
Jesus Ranch (Tenacious D)
The Rainbow Connection (Kermit the Frog)
You Wreck Me (Tom Petty)
*Indicates the first time I've performed this song in Second Life.
Massive thanks to everyone who cane out to the show, with super special thanks to the following who helped support it!
Trouble Streeter, Richy Nervous, KarlPeterKP Resident, Merope Madrigal, Alex Zelin, Kat Claxton, my terrific manager Maali Beck, Hotel Chelsea manager Shyla the Super Gecko, and Chelsea's great staff.
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