All you’d see on stage is a crowd of shaking hands, shaking so violently you’d wonder whether they were going to fall off and crawl away. Sweat accumulating on foreheads and upper lips and eyelids. Lights staring so intensely it seemed like anything caught in their vision would shrivel up and wither to dust within seconds. The battle to calm nerves is fought tenaciously; the wait to begin is excruciating.
When the music starts, it’s a race of fingers. Graceful, precise, feverish. Hands flying across keys and eyes flitting across paper. Like an explosion in slow motion, a flower in bloom, fireworks shooting across the sky, an ocean flowing through ears and mouths, instruments and entire bodies.
There’s something in performing that allows the opportunity to get lost and be found in another universe, and most times, the opportunity is taken with a willingness so great it’s impossible to think of ever returning. Each note released sends you floating farther and farther, so far through the cosmos, you forget the dirty little theater you’re playing in even exists.

And when the music stops, it’s like waking from a dream you weren’t aware you were in.