So, in the midst of my practising, and uploading my daily 100-day Practice Challenge videos, and tidying up the details for my Feb. 3 concert coming up at the Asia Society Texas Center, writing tons of emails, and going to concerts, and networking, and thinking about my future, and sometimes getting nervous, I am writing my book.
It is a lot harder than I thought it would be. It is painful to remember painful memories. It may even be more painful than to live through it. While things were happening to me, I had choices: to ignore, to keep busy, to laugh, to talk back… but remembering it as something that had already happened, to me, in my past, all the choice I have is on the narrative and the choice of words with which to narrate.
I am sharing my Forward here. To make my resolve known. To commit to finishing the book. To hopefully find out that it might reach some people. I need support.
I have signed up for a writing workshop course at UCLA. I have been speaking to friends. I have been exercising, eating well, trying to sleep…but this is a scary process, despite my commitment.
Here it is: The first two pages of my book.
Have you ever been so scared you felt like your teeth might fall out? …I have. This is a book about how I conquered stage fright. I wrote it hoping it may help you.
My knees shook. My hands became ice cold. My fingers trembled. My heart raced. And I remember thinking, I would rather be shot dead than to go on. But I did go on. Night after night. Concert after concert. With my trembling fingers I still did my best to try to weave out the Chopin, the Mozart, the Beethoven, praying for each note to just come out. With my shaking knees I tried to pedal. To my paying audiences, I begged for forgiveness in my mind as I played, for at least trying so, very, very hard. My biggest fear was to forget. To forget the next note, or the chord, to not be able to go on, to have to stop. And more scared I was, more likely I would make that mistake that leads me to a catastrophic memory slip. I felt like I was reciting a poem in a language I did not know, and that my life depended on its delivery. In retrospect, I realize that I could have run off stage, like I have seen some students do, like I read some historical pianists have done. But I never did. I don’t remember if I did not realize that was a choice, or if I consciously chose to stay on stage, to keep on playing.
The choice to give up on the piano as a career did cross my mind. But I felt that if I quit because I was scared, I would have to live the rest of my life scared of everything. I could not quit until I conquered my fear, I told myself. I tried everything. I practiced harder, and harder. I gave up on sugar, meat, eating at certain times, not eating, eating more of this and that… I tried self-hypnosis. I tried counseling. I read literatures on stage fright. I attended classes on performance anxiety. I tried breathing exercises, yoga, cardio… These all worked to a certain extent. But I was always afraid that my stage fright may come back in my next concert – and they did, from time to time. I had no way of telling which.
Eventually, I realized that addressing the symptoms of stage fright was only a temporary fix. I had to address the underlying causes. There were two. One was my lack of self-confidence. Receiving extreme praises and compliments, alongside many rejections and facing general indifference to my art in the world was confusing. In addition, sexual harassment in classical music was pervasive. I, too, was victimized multiple times in various forms to various degrees by teachers, mentors, patrons and art administrators. It all made me wonder where my value laid in the eyes of those in the industry, in the audience, in the world. Was I special? Did my music matter? Or, was I just a piece of meat…? It took me years to realize that my sense of self-worth or happiness did not depend on how anyone else saw me, or said about me. It had nothing to do with the number of concerts I played, the amount of money I earned, the applause or the words of praise. It only had to do with how I saw myself. Everything else was my projection. I had to like how I played, how I lived, and who I was. The only thing that you will ever know is how you see yourself, and that is, ultimately, the only thing you have an absolute control over. That is an empowering realization.
The other underlying cause of my stage fright was my ignorance about the music I was presenting. I went back to school to remedy this, eventually attaining my doctoral degree. Through my research for my doctoral thesis, I discovered that my insecurities and ignorance had much to do with the culture of classical music and its historical background. I was hardly alone in my struggles. Struggles and sufferings were Romanticized in classical music, and fine arts in general, heavily influenced by the nineteenth-century Romanticism and its German philosophers. I grew up being told that I had to suffer to truly understand beauty, to have my heart broken to understand Chopin. Although these beliefs are almost cliché, I doubt that people who use them to advise young musicians know their sources. I certainly did not, and took it as the truth. I may have not tolerated the sexual harassments, for example, if I didn’t think each time that the experience made me a better musician. And somehow, in that culture, “suffering” supposedly gave you better insight into music than intellectual understanding. A world-famous pedagogue once told me that music theory interfered with one’s musical intuition. That music is to be “felt” and not “understood” is also a Romantic notion. The promotion of anti-intellectualism in music is traceable to the German Romantic Idealists, like Schopenhauer and Wackenroder. But it’s not true, at least for me. Understanding its historical background and theoretical construct enhances my “feelings” and “intuitions” about each composer and his piece. Identifying the root of your cultural bias gives you the choice to reject it. That was another empowering realization I attained through my journey to overcome stage fright.
I did suffer through some excruciating periods in my life. However, it was all worth it. I now consider my journey to conquer my stage fright, and what I have learned from it, as a gift I have to share, with you. This is the story of my journey.