First Performance

Many people watch celebrities on T.V or on YouTube singing live and wonder how they can be so confident and flawless in front of hundreds, or if not, thousands of people. But little do they know that these people have in fact faced stage fright and hardships when they first started out and overtime worked really hard to overcome it. I too have faced the same problem when I started to perform on stage.

It was the cold winter of 2014 in a small city of Al-ain. I was about 15 years of age and that was the time when music had a really big influence on me; I mean it still does but that was the beginning, so everything felt so grand. I didn’t listen to any of the modern artists that much, except for Ed Sheeran and George Ezra. I was more into the antiquated music such as the Beatles, Bob Dylan, or Johnny Cash to name a few. One day, I went to the concert of Ed Sheeran and it was absolutely astonishing for me. His energy and the way he put out his performance was just amazing. As I watched his performance with amazement, I decided there and then that I wanted to be just like that guy!

The very next day, I went to the local music shop and bought an A42 Kenswood acoustic guitar with the little money I had saved over the summer. My parents were not such big fans of music, thus they didn’t enroll me in any guitar classes so I had to learn all by myself. It was the first time I took singing seriously, too. After a month or two, I thought I was ready to perform live, “Ed Sheeran started this way and so can I” thought. I booked a gig in Dubai and took the first bus in the evening and was on my way.

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Finally, I was in front of the club. All I needed to do was to walk in but my legs suddenly felt so heavy ad wouldn’t move, it was as if someone had injected me with anesthesia because they would just not move! At last, I found the courage to walk in. When I got there, they put me in a waiting room with other musicians. I heard some of them practicing and I felt anomaly surrounded by real musicians and not a kid who had just recently learned how to play a guitar.

Then, it was finally my turn. By that time anxiety had got over me so much that the few-pounds-guitar felt like many kilos. I went up to the stage and was so nervous that I thought I would faint any minute and that was when all the problems kicked in. The microphone wasn’t working, my guitar strap got ripped off, and the chords just wouldn’t sound the same as they did before. I took a minute off and thought everything through. “No one knows me here, two and a half minute song, and then I’m off for home”. This gave me a little courage and my racing uneasy heart finally settled down. Then, I went out again and to my surprise the microphone was working and all the chords sounded they was they should. My performance was successful but not was I had in my mind, but people still applauded for me and encouraged me to come back again.

My first experience was truly a nightmare now that I think about it. But from that day on, I gained more and more confident every time I stepped on the stage, I may not talk much normally, but I feel stage is the only place where I let that weight on my shoulders drop and perform with all my heart.