Sometimes, in the studio, I forget the performance angels floating just beneath the skin of engineer, producer, session player, writer. But a strange thing happens when I listen back to a freshly minted song, like Wide Open, with a Hammond organ whirling its signature sound from intro through denouement. I remember watching Chris play the part, sideways to the keyboard, nonchalant and focused, both. But when I hear the finished song, I see a band in full regalia, pounding out the sounds, organ player juiced and joyful. My mind flips back and forth between these images of studio and stage, session and performance, focus and abandon.
To say there is a performance artist in every human is to recognize this flip-flop game of the mind we play out on formal and informal stages. Some of us never step beyond the studio -- kitchen, office, gym -- to serve our muse. Others of us leap onto stages at the least provocation, flashing our potential at the wide eyed crowds.
After all is said and sung and done in either sphere, there enters excellence. This is where the artist sheds her mortal skin and for some time bound eternity, reveals her muse's world. This can happen sitting sideways to a keyboard, it can happen under colored lights and amped up airwaves. Its requisite preamble is a passion honed to near perfection over years of unquestionable fondness for the muse.
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