By Luke LeBlanc
There’s something about playing a concert that feels good. I could just accept this fact, feel good, and move on, but for some reason I am compelled to analyze why it feels good. Of course, performing with a band of friends to a loving audience carries with it an insurmountable level of joy. More important, though, is the other half of this “why,” because it applies to performers and non-performers alike: when I am performing, I can’t think.
More accurately, performing is one of those activities where you think about one thing and one thing only. I can’t ruminate on whether the phrasing of my email is the reason that the one radio host didn’t get back to me; I need to be sure I go to the B-flat following this chorus. I can’t add “order a new external hard-drive so you don’t lose all your files again” to my to-do list; the quick switch from the one chord to the four chord is coming up before I hit that G-minor walk-down. I can’t check my wifi-enabled cat-cam to ensure Houdini and Minnie haven’t embarked on a feline adventure and escaped my apartment; my phone is on the stage with the Set-timer app running and I need to adjust my Vox AC115 amplifier before the next song. When I perform, I don’t worry about a thing. It’s not through some kind of super-human willpower that I’m able to free myself from the shackles of overflowing thought; I’m simply too distracted by the good time I’m having.
The idea of productively distracting yourself from excessive fretting is not a novel one. As author, private pilot, and piano-technician Thomas S. Sterner writes in The Practicing Mind, “I not only loved to practice and learn anything but found the total immersion of myself into an activity to be an escape from the daily pressures of life.” If you haven’t read Sterner’s book, I highly recommend it, as it centers around the pure joy and fulfillment that practicing a skill or passion can bring. The process itself is so encompassing and produces such a strong sense of accomplishment that an overactive mind is forced to sit down for a moment, ease in, and enjoy the ride.
Luckily, playing a concert isn’t the only way to achieve this state of bliss (otherwise, I’d only have peace-of-mind once a month). As beautifully enriching as it is to develop skills in a profession, an instrument, or craft, I would add that it’s equally as important to funnel these efforts into immersive periods of relaxation as well. Find those non-toxic things that you can immerse yourself in so much that you temporarily lose sight of everything else. They don’t need to be serious. In fact, I think it’s time we get serious about not being so damn serious.
For me, performing gives my mind a break from thinking, but so does getting lost in the worlds of TV and movie franchises (hello, The Watcher), queuing up a two-hour podcast while I clean the apartment, or getting lost at 1 AM in a trail of Wikipedia articles that consider time as the fourth dimension. By no means have I perfected the art of fully immersing myself in things that let my mind go, but the process of working on it has allowed me to become better at it. So allow yourself to get lost. And have fun doing it.
Luke LeBlanc is a Minneapolis-based singer-songwriter whose new album, Fugue State, was released on Oct. 28, 2022.