Last night I played my first open mic in Seattle. It’s quite a different scene there than the East side. The room was in the basement of an old church in Fremont, the self-proclaimed center of the universe. It had that dark coffeehouse vibe, without the coffee. The lineup was relentlessly young, hip, confident, and accomplished, none of which I am. And they all wrote their own songs. Even the two fourteen-year-old girls wrote their own songs. The performances were uniformly good, and some of them were great, like “check out my latest CD” great. I ran into my friend Bob, from work, and he assured me everyone was supportive. He and his wife were the only ones even close to my age. Their twenty-something son was performing that evening. I was all bundled up: fleece pullover layered on top of a heavy knit sweater, long underwear. I get shaky when I’m cold, and I didn’t want cold shaky amplifying my nerves shaky. I purposely didn’t shower or change clothes before going because I didn’t want to make a big deal of it. It was important to think I was just throwing on some shoes (untied) and going down to play a couple songs. This is one of my tricks to control performance anxiety. At some point I began to sweat, so I took the pullover off, exposing my big fisherman’s-knit sweater, basically part of my daytime pajamas during the winter months. One of those things that never seems to make it into the wash. I’m comfortable in this sweater, even at the center of the universe. Finally it was my turn to go up. I felt good ascending the small stage. I felt good introducing myself and talking with the audience. And I actually felt fairly good singing—but something bad was going on with my fingers. They were all wobbly. I was muffing chords that I can normally grab instinctively, I was hitting the wrong strings. My mind was racing all over the place. Even while singing, keeping the lyrics lined up in my head, I was thinking things like, “Missed that chord. Do I need to get closer to the mic? The slide is coming up, how will that go?” Well, nothing went great, but it went. I didn’t forget the words, I didn’t stop, I didn’t totally destroy the songs. I got the open-mic applause, which is always such a nice thing. On my way back to my seat people complimented me. This is also normal open-mic behavior, and I don’t want to make more of it than there is. But I did notice that nobody said “good performance” or “well done.” They invariably said “I like your songs,” which I took as a good thing. Sitting there later I thought about my performance. The last time I wobbled that badly was the first time I played in front of strangers, and before that the first time I played in front of Wendy. Both of which I got over, as I will get over this. After me, the generally high quality of performances resumed. They got even better. A young woman next to me went up and sang a couple of sweet, wispy songs. When she got back to her chair I said I liked her songs, and she said she also liked mine. Right then I realized that I stank. Literally. I put my pullover back on and for the rest of the evening kept my arms close to my chest. If I am going to become part of this scene—and I think I am—I may have to start taking a shower.