Open Mic Night
My performance of “One Sided” in front of the school influenced my decision to go to open mic night on December 13, 2024. Similar to my school performance I would be playing with my guitarist friend, Masato and we decided to perform two originals that I wrote called “Merry Christmas” and “Nothing Ever Feels The Same.” However, this time my friend and I had a week to prepare rather than a day.
I remember feeling really defeated after taking an extremely difficult biology test on the day of open mic night. I felt mentally exhausted and depressed, but I still wanted to follow through with performing with my friend that night. We practiced a bit in the school recording studio that I have become so familiar with, and then went to get some dinner before the perforamce. I will never forget that drive to Shake Shack.
Joined by our friend Winslow in the car we pull out of the parking lot at school. Suddenly I hear a few familar chords, Masato is playing a raw recording of “Nothing Ever Feels The Same” that I had sent him. As we drove to get food, the three of us are singing along to my song that is blasting on the car’s radio. That moment was so special to me. I got chills from just everything in that moment—hearing my song in the car, singing along to it, and spending that time with my friends. That moment erased all the frustration I was carrying from the biology test. I felt pure happiness and excited for the performance.
Fast forward to the show, similar to most of my performances, I don’t really remember too much from the actual performance just about how I felt after. And if I am being honest, I felt a little unsatisfied with my performance. I thought that the performance for “Merry Christmas” was great, however for “Nothing Ever Feels The Same” I knew that I could have played and sung better. It’s not that I played bad or made an extremely horrible screw-up, but rather that I knew I could have given more in my performance my favorite original song.
However as I replay that night, I realize that a positive came out in performing at open mic night. In the past when I have screwed-up a song at a recital or concert, that moment of failure would ruin the song for me since it would reminds me of the bad memory. I remember screwing up my performance of “Someone You Loved” by Lewis Capaldi in one of my recitals when I was eight, and I still can’t shake the bad memory whenever I hear the song. But as I look back on my performance of “Nothing Ever Feels The Same” I find that I don’t feel the same negative emotions after my underwhelming performance. Instead, I think of the great happiness I felt in the moment that my friends and I blasted my song and sang along together in the car. I think that’s the beauty of performing. It's not about having a perfect performance but about making mistakes, continuing to play through them, and refusing to let a few blunders define an entire song.
