The Perfect Wrong Note Learning to Trust Your Musical Self William Westney 4 % ee TABSJ 7 Ont of Control, The Brana of Performing ‘Thoughtful, absorbed practicing can indeed crete an oasis of serenity, Bt what happens when i's time to perform? Cleary Is ane thing to make music in private and quite another to do so onstage, And when I say “onstage” I mean it metaphorically: per Farming fr tw people in living room can fee every bit as publ ‘performing foe two thousand in a hal, Wie tend to undergo dramatic changes whenever our bea lors are framed as pabile performances, Teling a sod joke in pe ‘ate, or voicing & passionate opinion toa fiend—these are natural colorful se-expressions Buti someone told us that television cam ‘vas would start rolling while wetold the joke or expres opi loa, we'd be “acting” and would probably fel sf and artical, ‘Sometimes we even forget how to sale when we have to "perfor ‘smile; when a professional photographer asks us to smile nat rally we Inexplicably cant figure out which muscles we normally te, so we end up grimelng weedy into the eamera Physical sls, as wll as perso expressions, fe diferent when there is an audience; as malls wate, che figure skater rnsses the triple jump she had landed perfectly in practice just ‘moments bor, Or the golfer misses the wooo put that would ‘ave won him the championship and mlion-