I know I’ve mentioned the bardic thing before, however obliquely.  If you missed the previous allusions, um, I’m a bard.  I translate mythology from Old-Irish and Middle Welsh, and I study history and archeology, and sometimes my Muse wakes me up in the middle of the night with a maelstrom of notes and phrases and I race to record everything she mutters to me before she runs off and/or my head bursts open.  Sometimes I suffer over a piece for ages.  Sometimes it comes whole-cloth.  Either can be gut-wrenching.  The resulting poems and songs and stories, even if and when I can accept that they’re worth sharing, have a very small target audience.  Most people don’t get it, and I am generally ok with that.  Though I do, obviously, have an urge to reach out to people and share what I think and know (hence blogging, and teaching clogging, and the general not-shutting-up).

My friends Etaine and Anubh are also bards.  And while each of us researches, writes, and performs differently, our aims are similar, and we play to the same audiences.  And, of course, we’re quite literally members of the same tribe, we three.  So, a few years ago, with some very gracious needling from Anubh (who said something spot-on like "Um Lanea, don’t you run big parts of this festival?  Why don’t you get us stage time, silly." like she does) the three of us ginned up an act, with a set list and everything, and went on stage.  A bunch of times.  At our lovely local festival.  It was certainly different from performing at living history events, because–woah–friends of mine from work showed up.  And a distant relative.  And some immediate family.  And there were strangers there, sitting between our friends and relatives, listening to us and wondering why so many people in the audience knew the words to these unusual, unpublished stories and songs.  Those folks only heard the most accessible of pieces, of course, but even so seemed surprised by the rawness of the source material.    Many people expect storytellers in funny clothes to kids’ performers.  We’re not so much with the kid-friendly, because the ancient world didn’t worry about age-appropriate art.  Blah blah blather blah. 

Up until now, it’s all been so relaxed and unofficial.  And while I know that there are people who really love what we do, we have a short reach, you know?  No recordings, and no books, and no press kit, and just the half-assed managing I’ve had to do to book us at a festival I’ve had the run of in the past. 

Yesterday, there was a contract in my in-box for me to sign.  We’ve been booked to perform at the Celtic Fling in PA in June.  And I have nothing to do with the running of that festival, so my brain registers it as huge and new and a different sort of accomplishment.  It’s an official GIG.   They’re paying us to get up in front of strangers and do this thing we do.   I’ve known about the gig for a while, but the contract makes it real.   

I think I’m going to pass out now.  The only thing that is keeping the blood in my head is the knowledge that at least one friend will be in the audience (yay, thank you!).  I thought I had become immune to performance anxiety.  Apparently, I just don’t get nervous when I perform at home.  Pennsylvania, however, is all the way up there.  Are there tigers?  I bet there are tigers.  And mean critics, with sticks.  And hecklers.  And no one will know the choruses, or the stories.  And they will, quite possibly, sacrifice me to some weird Pennsylvanian God of, um, amplification.  Have I mentioned I hate microphones?  Yeah–not so good for anyone with an interest in performing music.  They always squawk and the wind-cover sock-thingies smell bad.  Guh.

We’re going camping this weekend with the Celts.  I’m going to sing with my people and not think about the strangers.  And the Contract.  And the tigers.

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