Reading Their Faces

I like this picture because it warms my heart. For me, it represents connection, humility, culture, belief and fulfillment. It demonstrates what I was put here to do. My friend introduced me to Lancaster a few years ago, and I have built up a connection to the city, travelling there regularly to take part in, and contribute to, the cultural life of the place. Here I am, singing songs at Atticus Books, a tiny little secondhand bookshop, for an audience of ten, during the music festival last November.

A few years ago, I realised (or was helped to realise, by something I had read) that it’s not always a case of reaching the maximum number of people with your art. Sometimes, an audience of one can be enough. Even an audience of none. The primary connection you need to commit to is with yourself.

The depth of one’s connection to an audience seems to be inversely related to its size. When I play in this little shop, surrounded by books, in front of friendly faces who value what I am doing, I know that I am doing something good for myself.
In such a space, I never feel that I am providing anything that won’t get received. There is no wasted effort, which is what can make live performances exhausting. When playing on a stage in a large room, it often feels like you are throwing stuff out into the void – notes, banter, feeling! – in hope that they will be received and appreciated.

When you have peoples’ attention, and can discern their reactions much better, you can really start to flow and create in that strange improvised landscape of performance. Others might have all this stuff down to a technique, but I’ve always found it fundamentally mysterious.

I go to play at the festival partly because the owner of this bookshop pays the performers a decent amount of money. But also, my heart knows it’s worth it. These are the connections worth building and believing in.

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