The other night I dreamt I had back-to-back Saturday/Sunday concerts—with very distinct programs, as is usual these days. And it was already Saturday morning...and I realized I hadn’t made the programs yet. They weren’t just not formatted and printed; I hadn’t completely worked out exactly what I was going to play on each concert. I wasn’t full-on freaking out, but it was tense.
Then—this was somehow later on, in standard dream discontinuity—as Annelies and I were leaving town, we passed a house full of kids where we heard Joplin’s “The Entertainer” being played on a recording, or maybe a toy. A dinky little portable keyboard appeared, and I thought it would be a real hit with the kids if I started playing the tune live from the street. And it was—a whole crowd of them came out of the house, hooting and bopping around (this much is realistic enough; the elementary-age crowd does go nuts for live ragtime) as I struggled, somehow successfully (this part is somewhat more fantastical) to telescope the exuberant melody and expansive oom-pah accompaniment into the keyboard’s 2½-octave range.
But that wasn’t the end of the episode. As the kids were romping in joyous abandon, I was very concerned that Annelies have her phone out to record the scene (credit where due: she already was, every bit as on top of things in the dream as in real life) so that I could document it on the website, in the concert writeups area. An area where I am at this writing well over a year behind…
It was a classic stage-fright dream—except that instead of the stereotpyical situation, facing some music I’d never seen or an instrument I don’t play, I wasn’t actually worried about anything on stage; I was anxious about the fussy busywork of the before and after: of composing, framing, and documenting the performances.
Immediately on waking, even while still in the liminal mist between recollection and reality, I saw the dream’s implications and had a wry laugh. It represented both a win—I started this project partly to overcome my performance anxiety, which is apparently tamed to the point that even my subconscious barely has time for it—and a spot-on diagnosis of the anxiety that’s taken its place: a chronic sense of administrative beleagurement and delinquency, weighted down by the sometimes tedious, sometimes daunting work of planning, scheduling, programming, documenting.
Hmm…it may be time to reconsider how much more I can delegate, beyond the current assistance with concert promotion and web redesign.
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