Last weekend.
I went to a local street fest and they had some bands playing. I saw one of them and they were entertaining. Anyway, it’s always nice to be able to hear live music. Sometimes, I wish that I lived some place where there were more buskers and street entertainment. But, alas, sometimes I have to create my own live performances.
The band played a lot of the classics — like Sweet Caroline and Journey — and I think I remember some Dua Lipa in there? They reminded me a bit of when my daughters were younger. They’d put on performances in our living room all the time — singing and dancing, mostly. They had an imagined backing band and stage names. Sometimes even costumes and something to stand in for a microphone. And performance is still a part of what all my kids do sometimes. Imaginative play is a performance after all, as is the storytelling that they do at the dinner table or around the kitchen when they try to bring some sense of meaning to what’s happened over the course of their days.
There were two American Sign Language interpreters at the performance this weekend. Honestly, they seemed to be having the most fun of anyway, including the band. I read not too long ago that sometimes ASL interpreters work in pairs: one hearing interpreter who sits with the “audience” and signs for the other interpreter who is deaf and for whom ASL is their first language. This allows for a richer, more detailed and nuanced interpretation.
I don’t know if this is what the pair of interpreters was doing this weekend. It’s possible that they were both hearing and taking turns simply because it was a long performance. I wasn’t focused on them for long enough to figure it out. I just noticed them because they looked like they were enjoying themselves so much. Was this part of their “performance”? Were they interpreting the band’s aural energy? Does ASL interpretation “count” as a “performance”? I’m not sure about any of this. But I do know that their presence only added to the live performance for me.
The last time I went to a theater performance, live, was to see The Brothers Paranormal, a few years ago now. It was stunning.
On Tuesday, I had a guitar lesson. It certainly felt like I was giving a performance. I was even on camera. (ha! The lesson was virtual.) And my teacher asked me to sing along with my guitar playing which made me essentially feel like I was patting my head and rubbing my tummy and walking and chewing gum all at the same time. But, honestly, it got me singing in front of her, which is kind of a big deal to me. I was so focused on the guitar that I couldn’t really worry about what I sounded like. I mean, I didn’t really sing through the whole song, but I say a few bars here and there. Does that count as a performance? I’m going to say yes. Yes. It counts as a live performance. And maybe even my own guitar practicing does too.
It was the bard himself who wrote, after all, “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players.” Which is my cue for my exit.
Rhena Writes 