the Tempest

Today I’m temping at about.com.  Fun.  I love being a receptionist!... Almost as much as I love singing. 

This may be a little disjointed, BTW.

So there I was sitting in my sister’s temp apartment enjoying my temp lifestyle on the Upper East Side, applying to all sorts of jobs and gigs that are interim, part-time, per-diem, one night engagements, month-long suares, – in a word: “temp.”  Then I get this email to go to an audition for a 12 piece party/wedding band.  I was all set to go sing my little petuski off.  

Earlier in the day, this crazy euphoric, totally buoyed up, awesomely motivated feeling came over me.  I had gotten some work at a place I frequent as a temp.  I had just come from my sister Caroline’s friends’ apartment (what’s up Janet and Margo!) where they graciously let me stay overnight, and I was feeling like I was part of New York’s soul or something.  All these hurried New Yorkers bustling to work, dragging their kids to school, and whistling Christmas tunes can sometimes make one feel like Suzy-Stressball, but on this particular day, I was alive.  The sun was shining too.

So I’m at work, answering phones and drinking my coffee, when I look out the window and feel elated out of the blue.  Although the dopamine receptors in my brain may have been kickin' it from all the caffeine, I believe I was having a breakthrough of sorts.   I decided I wouldn’t go to the audition.

Which brings me back to what I was saying before:  I realized that what I needed was to make music – my brand of music.  And maybe that sounds selfish, but hear me out.  I have a need to create and share and perform and entertain.  So by becoming a part of the 12 piece extravaganza, I would have been assuaging my need to make money and perform, and not addressing the most basic of needs: the need to create and share what’s in my soul, even if it touches only one person.  The need to finish what I’ve started, plan my own gigs, and take the world by storm – Emily Angell style. Yeah!

I felt motivated because I realized I could do it.  With every song completed by myself, I come a little bit closer.  With every gig I play, and with every song I show someone I don’t know very well, I’m reaffirmed.    

I won’t be discouraged again.

So I let them know I wouldn’t be there for the audition, even though I felt like I could’ve blown them away.  I also could have lied and told them I was really into their music, and excited to be a part of a group that gets so many gigs, when all I really wanted was to make money singing.  It will come, I tell myself.

And the other day when I got that wonderful feeling, that’s exactly what I 'd realized.