Neil-Denny LIVE @ Lestat’s
I did it! I survived the Rapture. It supposedly occurred on May 21st 6 pm Eastern time, the Second Coming of Christ, Judgment Day. I’m sure when Jesus wants to make his great return he will want it to be a surprise, and not so much an event advertised over various billboards that popped up over the Interstate-805. At any rate, I’m still alive, just cause for celebration. As a token of my gratitude for my prolonged stay on this gorgeous green earth, I played a show: Open Mic at the Lestat’s Coffee House on Adams Avenue.
This was the first time I was to grace the stage all by me onesy. No I didn’t wear a onesy, but I may as well have. I felt like a baby up there on the stage without my boys. The lights dimmed over the crowd, face to face with a dark army of silhouettes, ready to judge, ready to give me the yay or nay. This was my Judgment Day.
The cotton sensation started to take shape from the corners of my mouth before eventually taking hold of the whole territory. I squeaked out a few quiet words to introduce my songs and started strumming. I sang “Yarbles” a song about asking a girl out for a date, I said. I forgot a lyric at one point, a millisecond that stretched on like an endless hallway, but played through it after a nervous giggle. At the song’s finish, they clapped and whooped. Rather than appreciate the applause, the sappy insecure introvert inside wondered how many claps were sincere, or just a means to be heard on my recording.
Next was “Arapaima” a song about there being plenty of fish in the sea. The shadows shifted, and I was unable to recognize if their reactions were favorable, repulsed or worse, apathetic. I felt like I was singing to those eye witnesses they show on TV who sit incognito and keep their voices warped so as to conceal their identity. I was singing to unidentified entities.
There was of course, one shadow I could very well identify. Somewhere in that sea of dark was light, my girlfriend came to watch me play, and without her I probably, nay, most definitely would not have made it that far.
We sat in the car upon my set’s conclusion and listened to the CD. The bald man who did the recording said with a voice that was deep and gruff that I did good and that I should keep at it. We laughed at the part where I forgot my lyric and at the part where I impulsively mocked an innocent man‘s “Yup!“ after I asked if my guitar sounded okay. We laughed at how much of a total dick I was for that. This dick, however, stood erect, played its little heart out, and did what it intended to do.
I came.
