minstrel: Losing it

[Corrie Bergeron]

Duke Moonwolf became famous throughout the Middle for forgetting verses, to
the point where when a performer is having a bad set he or she laughs about
having "Moonwolf Disease."  On more than one occasion I have been doing a
piece I know very, very well, cruising along on autopilot, actually thinking
about something else while singing, and suddenly realize that I haven't the
foggiest notion of what comes next!  I can usually cover it by "keeping it
going around on the guitar" as Arlo Woody's-son said while I recover my
wits.  Once I even forgot what song I was doing!  (Let's face it, there are
a lot of folk songs in 4/4 time with the chords D - G - A.  Like darn near
all of them.)

Often I can back up a verse and take a running start.  That works because of
the way humans learn and encode sequences.  We don't just learn "one, two;"
we learn the *link* from one to two, and literally cannot get to two without
going through one first.  Can you recite the last four digits of your Social
Security number without at least silently reading off the first five?  Not
likely.  Of course, with ballads you have a lot of repetition, so the link
from chorus to verse is not unique.  Which is why you have to keep track of
where you are in the story.  

So here's my recommendation.  If you blank on a verse, keep rolling.  Don't
just stop cold unless you've caught yourself flat-footed (like I did that
one time I realized I didn't know what song I was in the middle of!)  Most
of the time, no one will notice, and if they notice, they won't mind.  If
you want to be certain that your audience is aware of your mistake, then
stop, tell them you goofed, and really drive the point home by apologizing.
That is certain to break the spell you were weaving and jolt them back to
reality.

Brendan
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Corrie Bergeron			 	corrie at tro.com				
Senior PLATO Courseware Designer, TRO Learning	www.tro.com 
President, Intra-Active Designs			www.itasca.net/~corrie/iad.htm
All-around neat guy		corrie at itasca.net	www.itasca.net/~corrie 

"Short term memory don't mean a thing when you've lost your mind" - Ellis
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