The Mind Creative
One particularly amazing experience was when I was performing
with my group in quiet town in Europe. My drummer was an
excellent musician, but would hit the bottle at the slightest
excuse! In fact, he would drink himself into a stupor every night
after a performance. At the culminating performance of the
dance festival, we were informed by the coordinator that we
were scheduled to be on stage within 20 minutes. All of a sudden
we realized that our drummer was missing! As we looked for
him frantically, a stage-hand help suddenly appeared in the
company of my totally inebriated drummer!! We were aghast
and wondered how to solve this problem in 20 minutes! To top
it all, as we wrung our hands in sheer anxiety, he promptly
passed out! Seeing our crestfallen faces the coordinator asked
us to be at the wings and promised to bring our drummer on to
the stage. To this day, I do not know what he did to bring him
out of his stupor, but he brought him on to the stage and seated
him. To our great wonder the drummer gave an excellent
performance without missing a single cue!!
“I feel that the artist is often in
a totally different frame of
mind on and off the stage;
especially just before
the performance commences. “
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