Playing to an Empty Room

What you can learn about an audience of one

There’s a sweaty awkwardness to standing on stage in front of a room that was designed to hold a bunch of excited people when those people don’t show up. Your face flushes. You feel foolish. You feel ashamed and apologetic.

It’s five o’clock on a Saturday afternoon. I’m sweating through my best shirt as I’m loading up my gear into the back of my VW Van to head to a gig. I’m 23 years old. I’ve been practicing all week. I’ve written a couple of new songs. I made up some posters and stuck them in the usual places— telephone poles, cork boards in coffee shops, and in a few storefront windows. I’ve told everyone I know, which isn’t many people. I’ve done all these things as preventative measures to counter the thing I fear most— the empty room.

And yet, despite my best efforts with a few notable exceptions, I played to more empty or half-empty rooms than ones with standing room only. It was crushing every time. It’s not so crushing anymore. I’ve recalibrated with age. I write more than I perform these days but there is still the empty room to face, albeit a metaphorical one since I’m publishing a collection of words on the Internet and not standing on a stage with my guitar.

It’s an audacious thing to make art of any kind and even more audacious to expect to have an audience for it. It’s a questionable life choice if you’re a sensitive type like me who’s shy and doesn’t want to make a fuss, but also desperately desires validation from and connection with others. 

After all these years, I still have vertigo walking the tightrope that’s stretched between the thing I’ve created and the world at large who might receive it. It’s a perilous journey across a dark chasm that many gentle and troubled, artistic souls plummet into. Some plunge silently into the abyss, stuffing the manuscript no one ever read into a cardboard box under their bed before picking the kids up from carpool and others swan dive from a bridge like Jeff Buckley. If you make art of some variety, maybe you will see something of your own struggle here in mine and find some comfort in the company of a fellow traveler.

Let’s Address the Elephant in the Room

We feel things as we experience the world and we make up stories to tell ourselves that reinforce those feelings. Fancy people call this confirmation bias. So before we go any further, I’m going to check my bias here at the door.

Here it is: I’ve never actually performed/played/published anything where there was no one to receive it. It only felt like no one was there because I had an expectation of more, always more. My disappointment was a corrosive agent that burned a thousand tiny holes in my bucket of self-esteem which ultimately knee-capped any chance of me making something good for the few souls who were present for that show. On stage and off, I used self-deprecating humor as my weapon of choice to guard against the sting of failure. The problem with this defense mechanism is that you wield it by the blade, not the handle and as a result, cut yourself to ribbons. Not only did I convince myself I wasn’t worthy, I also discouraged anyone who might be interested in my work to move on– that there was nothing to see here.  

The truth is that there’s always at least one person who’s listening, who’s tuned into your frequency. Out of necessity, I eventually learned to play for that one person. It just takes one pure connection for the magic that makes art to work.

Sometimes it was the barista. Sometimes it was the sound man. Sometimes it was the frowning, middle-aged woman in the corner, knitting a sweater for her dog. If you were picturing me on stage at Lollapalooza, hopefully you’ve redressed your mental image.

In these “empty room” gigs, when I made it my mission to reach that lone stranger, it changed everything every single time because I could finally get out of my own fucking head. I could get out of the way and allow the music to do what it does–connect. While the medium of publishing fiction is very different from a musical performance, it’s still that pure connection with at least one reader that matters more than anything else.

I wrote about this collision at the intersection of art and commerce in the music business in my first novel, “Rewind Playback,” that was published in 2014.  If you’re interested in a good love story that provides the inside baseball of a working band, you might enjoy it. 

My 2014 debut novel, “Rewind Playback,” is available at Amazon.

The Work is All We Have

The work is what matters. It’s the only thing we can control. We can’t control who shows up to read, watch, or listen. I must remind myself of this every single time I finish a project and put it out into the world. I’m happiest when I’m in the flow of creating and the words stretch out before me like a downhill run. In that flow you can’t be thinking about who your audience will be or if they will like it. You can’t worry that there will even be an audience. The moment I drift into this headspace, I’m no longer on the hill with my skis under me and the wind in my ears, but tumbling ass-over-tea-kettle with a yard of icy snow wedged into my pants.

So what are the obstacles that knock me out of that flow and how do I avoid them? You don’t need me to bang on here about the perils of social media and the tyranny of the like button. You know all that and you, like me, probably still engage, like recreational heroin users. Even if you’re not some type of artist, it’s impossible not to be seduced by the lottery ticket of instant validation at mass scale.

What I believe is more dangerous to artists is falling prey to the proliferation of quick guides to success. TOP 10 THINGS YOU SHOULD BE DOING TO GROW YOUR AUDIENCE!!! Whether you actually part with money and subscribe to these things is irrelevant. The idea that you can somehow make yourself a successful artist, that it’s within your power, is now living rent-free in your head. This insidious belief will chew at the foundation of your creativity until you’re left with a pile of sawdust. 

I don’t believe the people who sell these services to artists are evil or even that they don’t provide some valuable information– they occasionally do. What I do believe is that you can read all the books, and pay for all the services and still never be a commercial success even if your work is really good. Art cannot be “positioned.” Art is not about finding product market fit. Art resonates with people or it doesn’t and art resonating with people on a massive scale is extraordinarily rare.

Erik Hoel

wrote a great piece last week on how extraordinary it is for a writer to have commercial success. To believe that it’s within our control to make our art successful is a fool’s errand that will only empty your wallet, break your heart, and probably stop your flow.

What is Enough in a Country with Too Much?

When I look back on my life, I can attribute most of my unhappiness to a deficiency in gratitude and an overwhelming surplus of expectation. It’s easy to see how this happens. I was born and raised in a country of extreme privilege and indoctrinated with the belief that you can be anything you want. Find your talent. Do what makes you happy. Believe in yourself. Project the success you want to achieve. These are American fairy tales we confuse with life strategies. When our lives fall short of the happy ending, we either feel that we are utter failures or that we have been cheated somehow.

It helps me to be reminded that human existence for most of the world’s population is a bitter struggle just to survive. It also helps to be reminded of the incredible abundance of joy that’s possible in simply being alive. But the only way to experience the curative effects of these truths is to shut the fuck up and listen. In the depths of my personal angst, I am deaf and blind to anything but my own narrative. When I actually watch the horrifying news coming in from Gaza or I take a long walk and stop to stand in a field of wildflowers, I am reminded of my place in the larger world. I am blessed with the nourishing gift of perspective and everything falls into balance.

It’s much easier to walk without my head up my ass. Who knew? Playing for an empty room is now just playing. Playing doesn’t cost anything. It doesn’t require permission or approval from anyone. It only requires my willingness.

How Do You Face Playing to an Empty Room?

I’m interested to know how you confront the equivalent of an empty room in your life. What’s your relationship to the life you have versus the one you imagine having?

You might also enjoy this essay I published back in January. It’s turned out to be my most popular post on Catch & Release.