Headlong Into the Fear

By Peter Nevland - Dec 29 , 2008

My heart reeled like a staggering sailor on tossing seas. Nothing could calm the storm. Tightness of chest gave way to wobbling breath. Frightened thoughts huddled in fear, surrounded by the howling wind…“Why should I give you a show?”

“I’ve got a friend at Q101 who’s going to give us some on-air time,” I stammered back.

The booking person at The Beat Kitchen, in Chicago, wasn’t impressed. “Look, even if you get an interview on Q101, people aren’t going to come and see you just because they heard you one time on the radio. Unless you can get a local band to play with you, I can’t book you.”

I hung up the phone and dropped my head. Out of all the clubs in Chicago that I’d called, this guy was the only one who would even talk to me. I didn’t know any bands in Chicago. It was our first tour outside of Austin. Nobody knew who we were. We had no following. The world didn’t owe us any favors. Words couldn’t release the feelings that overwhelmed me. Reality slammed a sledgehammer into a chest that only a few weeks before had seemed entirely composed of confidence—

My feet had floated out the doors of Motorola on the chariot wings of my dreams. I was free – free to pursue this wonderland adventure of performance. Paul Finley had offered to tour with me across the Midwest, since he was setting up a few shows to promote his solo, acoustic guitar album, A.D. I couldn’t wait to get started.

Those first few days were heaven. I had just bought a Mac with a Motorola-procured discount. My hands had finally submitted to the offer of cell phone communication. A week spent arranging my room and computer with all the necessary organizational tools had created a suitable performance nest: contact and accounting spreadsheets, press kit assembly materials, lots of paper, a printer. An email flew out to my small, local fan list, twittering with the trivial trials of a week spent trying to organize my office.

With my workspace complete, I turned my attention to booking. Performing at Wizard Academy had provided me with a number of contacts across the United States, offering to put on shows or host Paul and me at their house. If I could set up shows in Oklahoma, Illinois, and Ohio, I figured Paul could take care of his home state of Wisconsin. Even when most of the shows Paul tried to arrange fell through, I still figured I’d be able to pull something off. After all, I’d solved multiple manufacturing crises at Motorola and managed to pass German engineering exams without being able to speak German only six months before. How hard could booking be?

Nothing prepared me for impending failure at something I really cared about. It wasn’t just the phone call to Chicago that unleashed a flood of fear. I had lost touch with the contact in Oklahoma City that was supposed to set up a show. Things started looking dicey in Dallas. My friend in Columbus kept running into difficulties. A couple colleges and a club in Louisville had turned down Mike Davis, a booking agent from Kentucky who’d offered to help us from an ad I’d run in HM magazine. My dyke had sprung a leak, and no Dutch boy had traipsed by to plug it up.

The night after the Chicago call, I mentioned how I felt to my girlfriend at the time. She told me I just needed to get over it and that I only felt scared since I’d never ventured out on my own before. That loving answer didn’t make my sensitive heart feel any better. Weren’t girls born with the ability to be comforting in times like these? Everything on the inside and outside seemed to be screaming, “Give up!” I’m not sure why I kept going.

Two days before we planned to leave, I found myself at church, intent on digging through the Lost-and-Found for a missing change purse that my dad had made me. I’d just found out that the show we’d tried to set up in Oklahoma was definitely off, and nothing was coming through for Dallas. A meeting between two guys I didn’t know and my pastor blocked access to the Lost-and-Found. I decided to barge in.

“Hey, Peter,” my pastor smiled.

“Sorry to interrupt,” I said as I moved toward the treasure box. “I just need to look through the lost and found really quick.”

“Peter, this is Eddie and Lance. They’re pastors from Oklahoma City.”

“Oh, really? That’s cool.” I tried my best to seem interested. “My best friend’s from up there. His family goes to a church called Bridgeway.”

“That’s where we’re pastors,” they said. “What’s your friend’s name?”

“Zach Ball. Do you know him? His parents are Tom and…”

“Yeah, of course! They’re great people!”

“Peter’s a performer,” my pastor interjected. “He’s about to leave on a tour. Would you be willing to perform one of your pieces for these guys?”

“Uh, sure,” I said, wondering if these guys would be ok with my craziness. I quickly started performing “Holy,” one of my memorized pieces that made fun of televangelists and told the story of the adulterous woman that Jesus had rescued. They loved it.

“Are you going to come anywhere near Oklahoma City?”

“Well, actually we were, but the show we’d planned to set up fell through.”

“You should come to Bridgeway. We have an arts and performance space called the Back Room. Let us make a few phone calls to confirm that it would work. When are you talking about and what can we do for you financially?”

“Actually we were planning to come this weekend,” I said. “We usually try to make $500 on a show, but I realize this is last minute…”

“Could we just take up an offering and have you play on Sunday morning to promote it? I bet we could get something close to $500…”

I walked out of the church office not having found my change purse. We did, however, have a tiny ray of hope in what looked to be a pretty bleak tour. Just before I’d walked into the parallel universe of a Lost-and-Found room at church where Oklahoma City gigs got booked, my pastor’s wife had said to me, “You know, Peter, I felt like God wanted to tell you that he’s going to make paths for you where they don’t exist.” I was pretty sure the path I had embarked on didn’t exist. X-Files theme music pinged around my brain as I struggled to comprehend exactly what it was that was happening.

The tightness in my chest didn’t go away for the next 4 or 5 months. Things weren’t about to get easier. But unseen forces seemed to be at work. Something outside my brain and more sensitive than my heart gave me just enough strength to keep taking steps. Nothing about them felt solid. Nothing in me stood resolute with courage. I plunged headlong into the dark night void of fear, unable to see what lay ahead in the froth of stormy seas.