I have noticed lately that I have no spoken word performances on my calendar. I’m not sure how this happened. It seems that over the summer and into the fall I had performances all the time, sometimes several in a week.
In an attempt to get over this hump and into some new opportunities, I googled open mics in Minneapolis. There are a plethora of open mics in Minneapolis, several for every day of the week. I could go to one every single day for a month without visiting the same one twice. At first I was overjoyed, so many chances to perform! So many new connections to make! Then I tried adding some of them to my calendar, and I quickly became discouraged. There are SO many of them! I don’t even know which ones to pick, and so much of my time is devoted to things other than open mics.
My dear friend Alice suggested that I try to go to one every week. There are an awful lot of things I try to do every week or even every day, but this is not a bad suggestion. My problem was that it will be hard to go to an open mic every week without going pretty frequently by myself. I like to have a buddy with me at performances. No matter how well it goes, as soon I step off stage I’m convinced that no one has ever said anything so completely moronic into a microphone. If I have a friend with me, when I sit down the friend says, “That was great!” and I remember that there are much worse things that have been said into microphones. But when I’m by myself, I end up just sitting with that feeling.
Alice, genius that she is, suggested that I bring a piece of paper with me that says “That wasn’t the dumbest thing ever said in a microphone.”
That said, I’m going to an open mic tomorrow at the Riverview Cafe in Minneapolis at 7pm, and you should stop by if you’re able. No obligation to reassure me after I perform. I’ve already conscripted a couple friends for that.