Like-Comment-Share in Facebook AND THEN in YouTube

I posted a new YouTube video, told my Facebook tribe and the video got a bunch of views, so of course I got greedy.

I asked everyone to “like” it, share it and comment — and they’d say “OK, but how??” (Yes, we are mostly over 30 … deal with it.)

So I made this “how to” so then you can try it on my video below (Mwaaaa-haha!!! Education is power!)

Ready? OK, so, let’s say you start from Facebook, where the video’s embedded in a post, like you see at right.

You can watch it from there, and you can like-share-comment on the POST, which is great!  But all of that stays within Facebook.

To like-share-comment on THE VIDEO you have to open it into YouTube.

Or if you really want to rock the promotions team, you can do both!

Here’s how you go from watching it ‘in Facebook’ to watching it ‘in YouTube:’ Click the “Watch on YouTube” button you see below the video and on the right (see the big red arrow on the image above) – and it will take you to YouTube.com where you’ll be watching the same video, right at the source of the video.

Once you’re watching it in YouTube, look below the video and you’ll see a “like” button, a “comment” icon and a “Share” button (there are other things, too, but I don’t know what they are).  The “likes” and “comments” you make here stay with that video and enrich it.

How to Like, Comment and Share on YouTube

You can also share it in a bunch of different ways from YouTube, including twitter, facebook, google+ or emailing it directly to someone. (Or whatever options YouTube makes available by the time you read this post).  And that helps promote it.

You can even get a code to embed it on your own website or blog (but that’s fodder for a different  blog).

So that’s it!  And now, here’s a perfect video to try it on!  It’s short (90 seconds), fun and even quasi-educational!  (And if you view, share, like and comment on it you’ll make my day!!!)

You’ll see the YouTube button on the lower right as soon as you start watching the video.  And the “like,” Facebook, Twitter and other icons you see below this post?  Those are for promoting this post (but not specifically this video).  Oy.

Enjoy the video!  And please like-share-and-comment!  Thanks!

So when I found out a few months ago that I might be touring with one of the world’s greatest living rock guitarists this fall [see my blog "I'm gonna be in a rock band!"],  I remembered that Berklee Music Online  actually has a 12-week course in the guitar techniques of Steve Vai  … who happens to be the actual legendary rock guitarist I’ll be touring with.

This kind of luck doesn’t come along every day.  So it was a no-brainer for me to sign up for that class – (plus I’m a fan of  Berklee Music and wouldn’t even be blogging but for one of their courses) -  but first I had to find out if instructor Scotty Johnson, who designed the Vai course, was open to me taking his rock guitar curriculum on harp.

And he was!  (Thank you Scotty!!)

So I joined a group of Vai-hungry guitarists from all over the world for 12-weeks of intensive Vai-ness.  And, frankly, I would recommend any musician take this course. 

Why?   Vai, being who he is, is very transparent about how he does what he does — so the lessons are revelations about everything from musicality to practice techniques.  

That’s already very cool, but then Scotty Johnson took the next step of taking Vai’s ideas and breaking them into bite-size exercises we can integrate, and into homework assignments that are challenging but not hopelessly daunting.  Translating those ideas to another instrument is just an added creative exercise – and there’s no wrong answer for how I do that!

So the course is a combination of meta-ideas about music, practice, focus and mindset  – plus very practical technique training: That sweet combination of big ideas with small steps for integrating them into your life.

And my big challenge every week is to figure out how to take those techniques and translate them to my own instrument so I can submit the homework – as we all do – as an MP3.

But a couple of weeks ago I realized that my classmates had no idea how I was creating the sounds on my MP3s, so I made this 60-second video to show them how I actually played Week 4′s homework … then I added a little intro to put it in context:

Let me know what you think!  Meanwhile I have homework to do!

Yes!!! It’s true!

And it’s not JUST ANY rock band, but with one of the world’s most amazing, incredible, virtuosic guitarists ever — Steve Vai!  Rehearsals start in less than a month and this fall we’ll be touring all over the US & Europe.  I’ll tell you all about it, but first …

MY FINAL SCHEDULED SHOW  before this new adventure begins is Mother’s Day Eve (Sat. May 12 – sooon!!!)  in Franklin, MA.  Tix are here.

It’s a special show celebrating the rockin’ mother-figures in our lives and it’s in the PERFECT place to celebrate the paradox of mother-ness (that glamorous-grumpy-marvelous-maddening experience we have with mother-figures – including ourselves – our whole life!!)

Why is “Circle of Friends” Coffeehouse perfect for this celebration?? It’s all about TRANSFORMATION.  These folks literally take a church basement and TRANSFORM it into a coffeehouse, with a gorgeous sound-system, lights, seating – and a great show (Ha! that’s MY part!). In fact, folk legend Ellis Paul calls Circle of Friends: “Probably the finest church coffeehouse in the country.”

So come help me PREPARE TO ROCK with a Rockin’ Mother’s Day Eve show!  And check out the very-very-VERY cool packages my assistant Bea & I created, including the “Make Your Mom a Rock Star!” package, the “GALA Girls-Night-Out” and “Empty-Nesters Special” (OK, we didn’t make an “Empty-Nester’s Special” yet, but we’ll try to do it tonight)!

GET $5 off standard tickets if you buy from THIS PAGE today (Thursday, May 3rd) and use the code “FIVE”!  Look for the purply-pinky tickets that say “CLICK for TIX,” then use your code once the ‘buying box” comes up.  The discount is is only good until Midnight tonight (unless we forget to remove the code, which is likely,  so go ahead and try the code regardless and if it’s still working, congratulations!)  — but - remember – the discount only works from this page.

OK … so wanna hear more about my soooooo cool Steve Vai adventure?  Here’s the link to the rest of that blog.

Here’s a picture of us talking backstage when I met him in Boston last year:

Vai & DHC Backstage in Boston 2011

Rehearsals start in less than a month – and I, with my CAMAC 32-string electric chrome MEGA-HARP  – will get to tour with him this fall all over the US & Europe as a member of the band!

OK … so …. how am I feeling about all this?? Trust me, I’ll be talking a lot about it in the coming weeks.  But in a nutshell:  I’m excited, scared, daunted, thrilled and I want to ROCK!!!!  

And what I REALLY want to do … is bring you all along on this adventure – by blogging and sharing everything I’m learning and doing.

OK …what I REAAAALLLY want to do is to blog AND collaborate with a women’s magazine, and write about this as an ‘embedded’ journalist — because this is SOOOOOOO incredibly cool.  

Ben, Vai & Me (note the DVD Vai has in his hand)

How cool is it???

It’s SO, SO, SOOOO freakin’ cool, that my teenage stepson is JEALOUS of ….. ME!!  (That may be one of the best parts so far!  See stepson in photo at left)

Aaahh!!!  I dream of standing up during my solo moment and saying:  “OK, all you girls out there — GIRLS OF EVERY AGE and GENDER — this is for YOU!  See this instrument??  It’s a HARP!  This harp means that YOU can rock your life with whatever you got!” –  and then ROCKING OUT on my harp.  Yes, yes … I know … this isn’t my show — it’s Steve Vai’s show (and I’ll tell you way more about him and his incredible approach to music in the coming months), but … look … I want to make it YOUR show.

I want you to get to experience this amazing adventure with me.  Because if you told me 30 years ago that practicing my freakin’ harp with a metronome for hours on end would eventually take me around the world, get me a record contract, a Grammy Nomination, lead to my own symphonic TV special, get an instrument named after me and land me in a rock band with one of the world’s greatest living guitarists,  I would have given you the name of a good psychiatric social worker (and trust me, I had one.)

So I want to share this with YOU in every way I can.  Because….

Yowwwzzzaaa!!!   I’m gonna be in a Rock Band!!!!!

So people started emailing me and saying things like “I’m bringing my niece and nephew to your ‘Auntie’s Eve’ show and …” blah, blah, blah — as if  “Auntie’s Eve” has been around forever and I could just hop over to Walgreen’s for an Auntie’s Eve card.

So then I started getting really excited about “Auntie’s Eve,”  and working out a special “Auntie’s Eve” setlist for my May 12th show, even though it’s officially my “Mother’s Day Eve” show.

And then I remembered that I wrote a song about my favorite Aunt, which I recorded a few years back for a piece on NPR — which you can hear in this little player (click the arrow-thingy and also, you can see me with my favorite aunt in the pictures below):

Gloria Hodes & Deborah Henson-Conant / Aunt & Niece / Soloist & Composer ... at the Piano

Then I thought:  I LOVE that song!!!  I want to release it on YOUTUBE with pictures of people with their aunts! Like me & my aunt (see at left).  Or YOU and YOUR Aunt!  Or you and your niece or nephew! 

So send me your pictures of YOU with with your aunt – or, if you’re an Aunt – of you with your nieces & nephews - but listen to the song first, because I want photos that look the way the song sounds – nostalgic, and a little bit funky, like from the 40′s – but they don’t have to be from the 40′s (obviously, since the ones at the left is from the 80′s).

Once you hear the song, you’ll know what photos of yours might fit  -  it could be a photo you took yesterday so long as it fits the music (or a photo you take tonight, just for this project!)

So… how do I get these photos from you? We’ve never done this before, so we don’t know for sure if this will work, but we have a “Plan A:”

Plan A:

• Email us the photos us at DHCWire”at”Gmail.com.
• Try to make sure they’re at least 1000 pixels wide (if you don’t know how, just send what you have)
• Include the names of the people, their relationship and the year it was taken.

My Aunt Gloria as my Uncle Bertie

And for people, like me, who get nervous about following rules: Yes, Great Aunts, Aunt-in-Laws, and Pseudo-Aunts are fine – my Auntie Jane, for example, is my aunt’s best friend – so she became Auntie Jane over time.  And, yes, she’s an Auntie.

Uncles are probably even fine, so long as they’re dressed up as Aunts, and of course Aunts-dressed-as-Uncles are perfectly fine (case in point, my Aunt, at right, in top hat, tuxedo and bow-tie).

When you hear the song, you’ll know what kind of photos fit.

And if you’re in New England, come to the show on May 12th!  With your … you-know-who.

You can tell it’s volunteer-run from the minute you hit their website – and it has a reputation for warmth, relaxed fun and quirky personableness that’s pretty unique these days.

About this show … 

We have a lot of mother figures in our lives – mostly not our biological mothers. My “Mother’s Day Eve” show focuses on songs and stories about the mother figures in my own life, from my Grandmother Anna and Edith to my Aunt Gloria and all the women … and men … who play — and continue to play — the role of mother to parts of my life.

The stories and songs range from tender to ridiculous, like “Watermelon Boogie” (If a man tries to deny you your favorite food, you drop him like a hot potato!), “Anna Bella” (the secret life of my mother’s mom), “My Mother’s Mexican Hat” (if a woman falls in love with a hat, big deal — but what if a hat falls in love with a woman?), “Favorite Aunt” (Once I barely reached her knee – but now she’s shorter than me) and “Good Mother – Bad Mother” (evil stepmothers are just fairy godmothers on a bad day). And adventure songs like “Cirque du Lune” about Doña Quixota — and jazz standards like “Take Five.”

What connects it all?  It’s all about exploring expression.  About using whatever resources I have as a solo performer, to bring the stories and people in my mind to life.

My instrument is the electric harness harp, a 32-string, 11-lb mega-harp that was invented for me by the CAMAC harp company in France.  This model was actually named after me, the “DHC Light” and CAMAC created it specifically so I can perform the way I do, combining stories, song, movement and all-out playing all at the same time.

I love that experience of creating a whole world out of nothing — the experience that’s at the heart of solo performance.  And I love taking a very naked instrument and seeing everything I can possibly do with it – from playing Blues or Flamenco to making it sound like a conversation with the dustballs under your bed, to playing a version of Hendrix’s “Star Spangled Banner” the way he’s playing it right now on his electric harp in heaven.

For me, my work with the electric harp is a metaphor for the individual – and for the incredible range of expression we all have, that we often aren’t aware of.   Every time I discover something new I can do with this instrument, it opens my eyes to the huge creativity we each have that we’re unaware of — and that we can find by opening a single door in our perception.  I want my shows to shine a highbeam LED on that door for each person in the audience, and for each to go home with a sense that the key to that door is right in their pocket.

The show is Sat. May 12, 2012 at 8pm at the “Circle of Friends” coffeehouse in Franklin, MA – a funky church-basement coffeehouse feel with a great sound system — in other words, the best of both world.  Buy tickets now.

It was my Aunt Gloria who gave me a sense of adventure and romance in my life, and so I’m dedicating this show to her, and thus giving it the unofficial title of “Auntie’s Eve” show.  I hope I see you there … with your Aunt! (And if you ARE an aunt … with your neices and nephews!)

“Disruptive Innovation” is a new term for me, although a Berklee student explained it to me at about 60 mph in the hallway before the session.

It seems it’s a subset of innovation, where a simplified version of some currently successful technology starts at the ‘bottom of the market’ and eventually rises ‘up the market’ to disrupt (and displace) its more established competitors.

Sound familiar??  It’s the Eve of Innovation!!!  I mean, the business/technology equivalent of the movie “All About Eve” with Bette Davis and Ann Baxter in which the established star is ousted by a young upstart.

The term “Disruptive Innovation” was coined by Clayton Christensen  who has a great 2-minute video explanation in case you don’t have time to watch “All About Eve” and “A Star is Born” or actually want to know what what disruptive innovation is.

The ReThink Music “Disruptive Innovation” event yesterday was basically a think-tank exercise, where participants split into 4 or 5 breakout groups, each group invented a new app or platform that would solve a current problem in the music business and then we presented these new platforms to one another.  Our specific focus was solving problems related to live shows, recording, distribution, marketing etc.

It was a fun exercise, and the platforms we came up with all solved problems I actually have and would happily pay someone to solve – though I doubt any of us will invest in the long process of implementing, testing and launching them.

But I hadn’t realized the impact of the think-tank exercise on my thinking until this morning when I sat down to regroup and realized I’d internalized the process of dispassionately identifying problems as a means to illuminate solutions – in other words, to look at the problems for what they tell us about themselves.  This was part of what Wessel and Allworth asked us to do and it wasn’t just a productive exercise, apparently it got me rethinking.

It also feels so much better to look as problems as a source of inspiration rather than a source of frustration.

My takeaway?  New innovations in technology may not solve all my problems, but thinking like a innovator may get me closer to solving them myself.

And, man, I gotta watch that movie again!!!*

*P.S. Thanks to my friends on my Facebook Official Page for helping me remember which movie I was talking about.  Plus all the juicy tidbits you added like:  “Fasten your seatbelts – it’s gonna be a bumpy night!” – Bette Davis

TINY BIOS: Max Wessel is one of the co-founders of “NeuvoStage” a web platform currently in the beta stage that’s built to connect empty performance spaces with performers.  James Allworth is a Senior Researcher at the Forum for Growth and Innovation at Harvard Business School.  Bette Davis was a great American actress born in 1908 and died in 1989.

You’re an entertainer as well as a musician.  You MUST practice, of course, to keep up and constantly improve your technique on the harp.  What about the ‘entertainment’ part of you?  People love your comfort level in front of the audience.  It’s similar to how a (good!) stand-up comedian would connect with the audience.  Do you work on that?  Do  you actually rehearse your ‘performance’ beyond the playing of your instrument?

I try to rehearse every part of my show, and when I can, I try to ‘perform’ the show alone by myself in front of a video-camera.  I don’t always have the time to do that – OK, I almost never have time to do that – but I wish I did.

I do like to be as prepared as possible for each show because the more prepared I am, the freer I feel.  If I ‘know’ what I’m going to say or do, I’m much more likely to actually do something different,  on impulse, rather than just because I don’t know what I’m doing – and being able to act on impulse is part of my goal in structuring any show, because then the show is a real interaction, not a ‘recital’ of something I already know.

I’m obsessed about having my set-list written down and on the stage, but once it is, I basically ignore it.  If it’s not there, I start obsessing about what I’m going to do next.

But if I know I’ve prepared, then I’m comfortable, even if pretty much everything goes wrong.

In fact, I enjoy it when things go ‘wrong’ – so long as it’s not because I was sloppy.  I guess it’s like asking someone to marry you.  You plan out what you’re going to say, you might even start there, but then you respond to what actually happens.

OK, maybe it’s not like that, because when you ask someone to marry you, you probably have a pretty specific answer you want.

What I mean is that I love being prepared, so that I’m ready to do things I hadn’t planned on.  That’s part of what makes live performance alive.  And I think you rehearse that by knowing what you’re going to do, and then being completely willing to not do it.

Often, those unexpected (by me) moments are the most memorable of a show, so long as I integrate them into what I’m doing — because they’re something we’re all spontaneously sharing.  Like any real exchange.

Comfort

I do feel very comfortable on a stage, more comfortable than I feel nearly anywhere else.  Certainly more comfortable than I feel at a party or a restaurant.

For me, the stage is where I can finally let down and breathe.  In many ways I’m more ‘me’ on stage than I am anywhere else.  I feel like I ‘belong’ there, I know what my job is when I’m on stage, and I know I’m not going to step on anyone else’s toes, accidentally interrupt someone, talk too loud or get in someone’s way.

That gives me a huge sense of freedom and relief.

An Opposite Direction

Last summer I had the opportunity to work on my one-woman show, “Electra’s Lyre” with director Robert Post.  That was a different experience for me, and something I’d love to do more of — and was a completely different kind of rehearsing and performance.

Normally, when I’m on stage I’m not playing a ‘character.’  I’m just being me in dress-up, except when I’m telling a story that involves another character – in which case I’m just being me being them.

But in “Electra’s Lyre” I actually play the part of Electra as she navigates  history – and I really needed a director to help me do that, to sculpt each moment and movement, and truly embody a different persona.

And the freedom that that kind of rehearsal gave me was the freedom to completely focus on embodying the character and her story regardless of what happened around me. It was a completely different freedom.

But in most of my shows, when I’m just being myself on stage, that’s like the dessert of my life, the pay-off for all the practice and the daily non-artist things that artists have to do and the moment when I’m probably most completely embodying myself.

Street-Harp

Last year I worked on a project that really surprised me by how it affected my onstage experience.  It’s called “Street Harp, ” and it’s a project I’ll continue to work on, because I find it so rewarding.

Basically, I just take the harp to places you wouldn’t expect to find it – like outside the subway station – and just play.  For me it’s very challenging to ‘take over’ a non-performance space and impose myself on it.  I can get shakingly nervous bringing my harp to a subway station, whereas I’m perfectly comfortable playing for a theater of a couple thousand people.  Go figure.

So that’s a way I can challenge myself as a performer.

When I can push through that anxiety and the sense that I’m imposing on people, and can just be in the space, it becomes very liberating, both musically and physically.  I found myself moving much more as I played, and making up whole new pieces on the spot.

And I was able to take that sense of liberation and physical engagement back to the concert stage.  It was some of the most powerful and effective rehearsal I’ve ever done for feeling free on stage.  I wish I could do it 2 or 3 times every week – except I find it so challenging and scary.

One day, outside the Alewife station in Cambridge, I was playing like I did as a kid – just playing to play, dancing to my own music.  There were very few people around, and those who were were just doing what they’d do every day, as if I weren’t there.  I had that delicious sense of being in the same space with others, ‘each with his own work to do’  — and mine was to be there playing music.

Aside from the sound of my harp, the station was nearly silent. A pigeon rose from the pavement and flapped up to the rafters — and the flapping of its wings sounded exactly like applause.

JACKY ASKED:   I’ve always loved the whole IDEA of improvisation - and all the aspects of it, how you can PLAN spontaneity,  whether you ever have to reign yourself in if you’re getting too far afield … and what it’s like to have to repeat the same work – and ’improvise’ within the same song many times over?

MY ANSWER:  Yes, you can  PLAN spontaneity.  You can create a structure or focus for it.  Or you can take two very different ideas and put them together – juxapose them, and that creates a structure for spontaneity.  Here are some examples:

Inviting Invention

My husband and I created a project based on that juxtaposition idea, which was called “Inviting Invention.“   It was a series of performances, always with a different special guest.  Each event followed exactly the same structure:

1. Presentation 1: I would present my work
2. Presentation 2: My guest – who might be a dancer or a journalist or a scientist – would present their work – often a very different kind of work in a completely different field.
3. Observations: We would briefly share our observations of each others’ work and then
4. Experiment Proposal: We would propose an ‘experiment’ to do together, in front of the audience, something that had simply ‘occurred’ to us as we watched each others’ work.  Sometimes the audience would come up with ideas — things they just wanted to see us try to do together.
5. Intermission  - which often included a panicked flurry of, ‘how are we going to do that???“
6. Let the Experiment Begin: We would do the experiment, in front of the audience.  Often we’d come up with a variation – or the audience would, and we’d try that as well.  Things that often started with, “What if we …”

Some amazing things came out of this structure, and often the less it seemed we had to work with, the more exciting and ‘aha’ the result was.  We did this at a couple different places including the Cambridge Science Festival.

So this was one way to ‘capture spontaneity’ — it was very structured, we always followed the same structure and it was hugely spontaneous, so that’s a perfect example of planning spontaneity.

Rounds

I work with capturing spontaneity on a more individual level at my summer creativity camp.  We do something that’s called “rounds” where we take an object, put it in the middle of the circle of people, and then each person in turn plays with it in front of everyone else — just for 5 or 6 seconds — but doing something that  gives a different perspective on the object – even if that perspective is not clear to the person who’s doing it.

There’s always a point where the collective mind takes a leap, suddenly someone ‘sees’ the object in a new way, ‘plays’ with it differently in front or the others, and then suddenly everyone’s jumping up with new ideas that riff off from that breakthrough.

In everyday life, we get married to what a thing ‘is‘ and what it’s ‘supposed to do,’ but that’s really just a convention.  This exercise gets your mind popping with all the different things you can do with that object, all the different things it could be.

So, when I first went to study with the teacher who taught me this technique, Tony Montanaro, I brought my harp.  I put my harp in the middle of the circle and asked everyone to play with it.  That was a huge eye-opener for me.  The harp suddenly became so many different things, had so many different possibilities, including the one that ultimately changed my life: the idea of strapping it on and working with it physically like a partner.

But these new and totally spontaneous ideas emerged because we were working within the structure of that game that Tony had created for us.  The structure holds our minds long enough for the spontaneous creative evolution to happen.  Without the structure, it’s monkey-brain time.   

A Musical Map

When I ‘write out’ a piece of music I often write it as a map or a picture, because that’s how I conceive of it.  It’s a structure I can play on.  Like a music jungle gym.

And I LOVE repeating the same piece, because I’m not ‘repeating‘ the same piece, I’m taking the same blueprint and using it to generate another experience of that musical structure.   It’s more like playing a game.  Even if you always play the same game,  it’s completely different each time — even if you’re playing solitaire.

For that matter, clouds are the same basic idea over and over again: air, water vapour, temperature change, but they can take a completely different shape each time.  So often the simplest structures can give the greatest freedom.

Take Five

One of the pieces I especially love playing with is “Take Five.”  The rhythm is very compelling, but the structure is very simple:  You play the melody and then you focus on the underlying rhythm and pretty much let it take you … with a strong emphasis on “let it take you.”  That’s the challenge: to create a musical rhythm and foundation that then takes you somewhere.  Lift off.

In that case it’s more like building a fire.   You build a pile of wood, sticks, paper  — but it ignites — you build it in such a way to enhance its impulse to ignite.  And there’s an art to that.  It’s a kind of structure.

I’ve been in the middle of “Take Five” and had an idea — like I did last fall, when I thought ‘wow, could I lie down on the floor and play’?  And within the structure of the piece I got down on the floor, with the harp resting on my chest – and yes, I could play it laying on the floor.

What I couldn’t do was get back up again.

So that became part of the piece – my inability to get back off the floor while wearing a harp.  An audience member had to come on stage and help me up.

And that all happened within the piece.  That all became part of that particular improvisation.

Will I try that again?  Maybe.  I might even practice the various ways I could get off the floor — not to improve that improvisation but to give myself a bigger physical vocabulary, more ways to get myself into trouble. 

You want to always be surprising yourself, even if you start down the same creative road.  And as you develop as an artist, part of what you’re developing is your ability to surprise yourself.

She was talking about swimming when said that every activity has two parts:  the effort and the glide.  And if you’re not riding on that glide, you’re not fully engaging in the activity.

I constantly ask myself: where is the glide in what I’m doing?

And I’m often frustrated that I think I’m missing the connection, focusing too much on effort,  inhibiting my glide.

Then just this morning, writing my weekly e-newsletter, I was explaining that I often do things to push me past my comfort zone, as a way of expanding as a performer. I found myself writing this:

I’m constantly trying to figure out how to engage more with my work or my instrument … So I’m constantly pushing myself — often into situations where I’m way out of my depth.

This pushing all happens off-stage, kind of like the flurry of pushing you give to a scooter or a skateboard … and the glide is what happens on stage.

BOOM!  Eureka!!!  I never knew that!  But I always knew that!

I always knew that the place I feel most free is between the opening note and the final applause of a show, but until this very moment, I didn’t know that that is my glide.

And while that doesn’t explain why I was recently inspired to wear a bathing cap on stage – it does explain I’m so driven to keep making that push.

My next show is Sat. Apr. 21, 2012 at the Shalin Liu Performance Center in Rockport, MA. Click for more info or just go straight to buy tix.