So I am at a music festival, staying in a chintzy Victorian b&b, preparing to play the clarinet in a concert. I have not played the clarinet in a while (btw, in real life *never*), but this doesn't appear to worry me too much. The big problem is that my clarinet has vanished. I can't find it anywhere and hesitate between needing my friends' help and not wanting to confess that the darn thing is missing. And my friends aren't inclined to listen, being too busy singing to each other. Then the clarinet turns up in the laundry basket. I am now bothered by the possibility that on stage it will smell of dirty washing. At last I examine the instrument and try to remember how to finger the notes, but...and we are about to walk on stage to give the concert and... time to wake up, gasping with relief.
I popped something about this onto Facebook. So many people started writing back with their own versions of it that I thought we should go public. There's even a Far Side cartoon version, 'The Elephant's Dream', in which the creature sits at a piano on a stage thinking 'What am I doing here? I'm a flautist!' Why do we suffer performance-anxiety dreams? Does anyone ever have a happy performance dream? Is performing so tied up with terror that the two things can't be separated in our unconscious selves?
4 comments:
I think all performers have the anxiety dream from time to time.
Standing in the wings, with only the haziest notion of the play and the part, and none at all of your first line ...
You think you've had a strange dream? I awoke this morning from one in which Dame Judy Dench had invited me to press my face into her cleavage ...
FK
Oh, we've all had that dream, FK.
I'm always about to sing Lensky in Act 2 of Eugene Onegin. Or the Marschallin in Rosenkavalier. I'm not sure which is more disturbing; the fact that I've never sung on stage in my life, or that I'm actually a chap!
Post a Comment