Super Trouper

It’s been many, many years, I thought I’d probably grown out
of it, but the spotlight seems to have finally found me again! Or I it,
actually, as I was the one looking.

As a child, I was always on a stage somewhere, showing off
in some way or other. It started with piano recitals, then I added dance and
finally I joined various bands and sang in school musicals. Show me a stage and
I’d be first in the queue to get on it. I suppose it’s all to do with the young
having no fear, because although my dancing career had a few more jerks and twitches
during my university years, at a certain age most women will probably grow out
of the desire to prance around in a leotard in front of a room full of
strangers. I don’t know why I stopped singing, though, probably simply a lack
of opportunity. And let’s not even mention
the piano recitals! You have to practise far too hard for those! So that was it
for me and the spotlight, and we each went our separate ways.

But filking renewed my desire to sing with other people, and
a few months ago I joined this singing course, which I told you about in my
previous blog. And last Thursday we had our end of term performance! Well, we
were supposed to call it a “sharing” rather than performance, because some
people tend to freak out at the idea of performing, but if you sing in front of
a room full of people, that’s a performance in my book! The idea of the “sharing”
was that everyone had to perform with
the choir, but performing solo or in a small group was optional.

Of course I did not have to think twice about performing
solo, because I still haven’t grown out of the need to show off. I guess it’s
in my DNA. So apart from my solo I had to do three songs with the choir; then
this girl really wanted to do something in a small group, so I said “hey why
not” and made an arrangement for Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas is Hugh You for three people; then this
other girl said she wanted to do a song that I just happened to know backwards
on the piano (and even filked! She wanted to sing Scarlet by Kiwi songstrell Brooke Fraser, which I filked under the
name of To Know but not to Seek) so I
offered to accompany her, and only a few days before the final show I realised
that a group of ladies were going to do an a capella version of Carole King’s You’ve Got a Friend, which I also know backwards on the piano, and we
figured out that their version and my version together really sounded awesome¦
so I accompanied them too¦

*glp*

Sounds like a typical case of the Ninas again, doesn’t it. Simply
can’t do anything by halves! Over-confident because of my previous love affair
with the spotlight I thought it would be a breeze. Yeah. I kinda forgot that
the spotlight and I hadn’t really spoken for well over a decade. Not to mention
that I never actually accompanied anyone, let alone myself on stage! But who cares, eh? The spotlight and I are old
buddies. Shouldn’t be a problem.

Cool as a cucumber and oozing with confidence I went into
the dress rehearsal, sat down at the piano to play Scarlet¦ and began to shake so violently I thought there was no way
I could get through the song without hitting any wrong keys. And I was right. Fortunately
it was during a little instrumental bit, so the girl I was accompanying wasn’t
too put off by my muddling, but I hit a wrong chord and my mind went completely
blank. I had no idea what I was
supposed to be playing. Finally, after about four or five attempts, I found the
chord I was after and we could continue, but my confidence was severely shaken
by the experience. What on earth was
I thinking signing up for so many different songs, even having other people be
reliant on my playing! But it was too
late to go back now.

The days between the dress rehearsal and the “sharing” were
torture (even I had begun to think of it as a sharing now, because “performance”
does sound far more professional, doesn’t it, and when you’re a professional,
you can’t really mess up!). I could not forget how nervous I’d been at the
dress rehearsal, and that was just in front of my classmates! Needless to say,
my nights were substantially shorter than they usually were, and I even got up
in the middle of the night a few times to check if I still remembered that
chord I messed up. It was a long week.

But the day finally came. Fortunately I had a lot of work to
finish that day, so I didn’t have much time to get nervous. Then we had to
somehow get my piano to the school, which also kept me too busy to get nervous.
Then during the warming up one of my classmates busted her knee ’ again
distracting me enough to not have to think about the performance. Then it
started. First up was Scarlet. I sat
down at the piano, looked around the room at the 80 pairs of eyes looking back at
me, felt the lights on my face¦ and I knew that the spotlight and I were still
on good terms. I think I played all the songs as well as I do at home, and I
loved every minute of it. Especially my solo, which was Missy Higgins’s This is how it Goes (which I also filked
under the same name), and our little group performance of All I want for Christmas were a big success. I need to get me more
of this!

I had planned to tell you in this blog what my plans are to
continue my affair with the spotlight, but once again I have been far too
verbose and once again I’ll have to leave it till later. But I will most
definitely let those Super Trouper beams blind me once more (su-pah-pah,
trou-pah-pah)!