Turning Up the Illumination on…Me!

As a performing arts publicist, I promoted others. Promote myself? Welcome, stage fright.

Once upon a time, I was the Director of External Affairs for a regional orchestra. I publicized concerts, promoted artists, enticed the community to attend, and urged devoted patrons to ensure the health of the orchestra by becoming donors. (Ticket sales cover an astonishingly low percentage of orchestral costs.)

I worked hard. It was a labor of love. I’d grown up hearing my mother, an opera singer, practice her scales and repertoire and had spent innumerable Saturday nights at the St. Louis Symphony with my friend Vicki and her father. Vicki was so bored that she’d drop crushed ice from her coke on to audience below our box, but her father quickly caught on that I was enraptured. Bless him forever for this gift.

Whenever I’d visit Vicki, I was drawn instantly to the grand piano in the living room. I’d play for hours, entranced. Once, Vicki’s dad even ‘hired’ me to play for his guests. Saint-Saëns’ The Swan, my signature piece.

Oh, that moment as the last notes died and clapping hands took their place. YES! This is what I was born to be.

I studied hard and even was accepted into Washington University’s School of Music.

Looking back almost half a century, I wonder now if what happened next was the first in a lifelong series of self-sabotaging decisions. I suspect it was, as I’ve written here on Illumination.

Or maybe it was Meant. That I attend my first class…hear my classmates perform…and split.

I not only quit music school but was so heartbroken I quit Wash U. If I couldn’t be a swan-in-waiting there, I’d be an ugly duckling elsewhere.

“I lacked the divine spark,” I told my astonished parents.

I haven’t played the piano since.

My keyboard has become a computer keyboard. I make music through words. I hear music in your words.

One day, I opened Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. “All writers are frustrated musicians,” Mann wrote.

Though for the life of me, I can’t get Google to verify these words, they’ve been my credo, calling card, elevator speech, and roadmap ever since.

Which brings us back to where we began. I, the frustrated musician, became a promoter of musicians.

Did I secretly wish I were on the piano bench rather than the soloist? Sure. I’d never stopped missing the life-giving, reverberant, luminous bond my instrument and I shared. Nevertheless, 98% of me left concerts awed, exhilarated, mega-grateful to have worked so closely with such gifted beings.

These days, however, I’m retired. The ‘musician’ I must promote is myself. And this is a gig I’d rather turn down.

Shine the spotlight on me, and what do I get? Stage fright.

A nightmare is visiting regularly. I’m the lead in a play. It’s opening night. I’ve neglected to memorize my lines. Worse yet, when I’m scrambling to borrow or unearth a script, none are around.

You don’t need to be Carl Jung to decipher this.

· Not knowing my lines = not having a clue how to go about promoting myself.

· Making no attempt to memorize my lines = no interest in cultivating this new role.

The elephant in my psyche’s room?

What if no audience shows up?

This last question so spooks me that I’ve made NOT checking my ‘claps’ on Medium into a spiritual practice. I call it non-attaching to ego.

When I find myself wondering — or, worse yet, my ego reattaches and I’m so discouraged I’m ready to walk out of Medium the way I walked out of music school — I distract myself. I ‘compose’ with plants.

“I am rescuing the garden as a gift to our landlord,” I proudly informed my therapist.

“Jenine…” my therapist replied.

“What?”

“When you rescue the garden, you’re rescuing yourself. Over and over and over again.”

I’m still not quite sure what to make of this.

What I do know is that an untended plant withers or worse. Ditto my post-retirement career on Medium.

Ergo, I’m tending to promotional business. Reluctantly, shyly, I’m introducing myself.

Let’s make it musical. As Anna sings in The King and I:

Getting to know you Getting to know all about you Getting to like you Getting to hope you like me