The sound of silence

I sat in the audience of the open mic night at The C Note tonight the whole time without putting my name on the list, without listening to Rick, the emcee, when he tried to get me up on stage, without moving from my stool or drinking more than one hard cider. It’s one of those scenarios where, normally, I’d invoke my inner journalist and say I was hanging out there looking for a story. But I wasn’t. I was planning to play and I chickened out, for the first time since I started running the open mic gamut in September.

I had a good time regardless. It was somewhat comfortable to bask in anonymity, to hear and not be heard. I talked to a handful of very interesting characters: a cute guitarist who works as a personal trainer by day; a girl named Blake who sang Martina McBride covers a capella, glorified-karaoke-style; a guy named Clinton whose soft touch reminded me of Teitur Lassen’s; Pete Sorkin, who recently got dumped and is shaking off the pain playing guitar and piano with a talented vengeance. "When are you going on?" they all asked. "Ehh," I replied.

I felt, sitting in the audience, like I’d calcified, plateaued, or — as I explained to Matt Brody, a recently married culinary school grad who’s one of my favorite C Note/Paddy Reilly’s performers — become a stagnant pond, the kind that mosquitos like to fly around. I’m very self-conscious about my songs: I worry that they’re trite, too simple, and speak only to me. As a trained classical piano player and a journalist, I feel like I should be writing diamonds but I’m writing stones.

I’ve got seven songs now. I haven’t finished memorizing the most recent one yet (part of the reason I couldn’t bring myself to play.) I was going to cover The Postal Service’s/Iron and Wine’s Such Great Heights in lieu of that one. It was pretty well-received when I played it last night for a few people who were over at our apartment. But instead I just sat there.

Speaking of having people over to the apartment: last night’s party, the first one ever in Mara-and-Jen-roommate-land, was a smashing success. I’m so happy we did it. About 30 people came, I think, in total and we didn’t close up shop until a respectable 2:30 a.m. I suspect we’ll be having another party before we leave good old J-school.