How was your performance today?

After you stop laughing, you’ll know it is true.

Everyday after you open up your eyes and roll out of whatever you’ve been resting on you begin your performance.

It might not be as an actor or a singer or a fast-talking flimflam sales person, but you are presenting yourself to the world everyday.

What your wear, comb your hair, how you walk, how you talk and what you say, hand gestures, what you drive, where you shop and what you eat all are part of your daily presentation.

The person sleeping in a cardboard box by the side of the road might not give the greatest performance of humankind, but it is all part of the show. The faces we listen to on the screen hold the optimum of presentations and that is why they are there. These are people who we believe are trustworthy and almost noble enough for their words to affect our lifestyles.

Preachers are good at presentations. Used car sales people are good at presentations. Doctors rely on diplomas on the wall for they are behind mask. Robbers are too and don’t present themselves well.

To get employed, there is a presentation. To get a romantic partner, there is a presentation. Some will require background checks and others will require jewelry. Medical professionals want to present themselves as sterile while military professionals want to appear dirty and tough. A teacher should appear smart while a boss should act like a leader instead of just playing golf and buying his boss drinks.

Most of us appear in a uniform of some sort or another, whether it is a fire or police or sports or insurance agents. The folks who pick up and hall away your garbage do not wear three-piece suits.

When we return home after a busy day at whatever we do for hours to earn cash, we change into our comfy clothing. Why don’t we dress like this all the time?

At the end of the day we slip into our footy PJs or flannel nightgowns and try to remember our script for the following day.

Cut!

Apprentice

Now we’ve discussed what is a ‘intern’ lets move onto an ‘apprentice’

Growing up after the war, kids were told to go to school to learn enough to procure employment before the baby comes. For the ones who wanted to be lawyers and doctors, that would mean going to college after high school.  For everyone else there were trade schools and apprenticeship.

An apprentice is a person who is learning a trade from a skilled employer, having agreed to work for a fixed period at low wages.

 An apprentice is also known as a trainee • learner • probationer • tyro • novice • mentee • neophyte • raw recruit • fledgling • new boy/girl • novitiate • pupil • student • beginner • starter • rookie • greenhorn • tenderfoot.

An apprentice is one bound by indenture to serve another for a prescribed period with a view to learning an art or trade.

 An apprentice is one who is learning by practical experience under skilled mentoring.

Job descriptions that required such training are • Able seaman • Carpenter • Chef • Childcare development specialist • Construction craft laborer • Dental assistant • Electrician • Elevator constructor.

The average starting wage for apprentices is $15.00 an hour, with wage increases as apprentices advance in skills and knowledge.

All apprenticeship completers earn a national, industry-recognized credential.

Employers might ask for two or more GCSE (GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) – formerly known as O-levels. A single-subject exam taken upon completion of two years of study at the age of 16 (age at US 10th grade). Students take anywhere between 5-10 subjects, which, if passed, are generally considered equivalent to a US high school diploma.) For some intermediate apprenticeships, however, you might not need any formal qualifications. If you don’t have GCSE’s in English and Math, though, you’ll usually be required to take a basic numeracy and literacy test.

The goal was to get that diploma. It wasn’t so much about parading across the stage in a choir robe and a flat hat with a tassel, that piece of paper was going to get you a job. The college diploma was going to get you a better job and more money.

It doesn’t work that way.

No matter how many test have been passed and whatever major(s) were accomplished, when you step in that office or shop, you know nothing. School allowed you to think, but the practicality of the workplace is different than theory.

When I graduated, my first job was an awakening of what I didn’t know. I was shown where everything was, how to perform the task assigned to me, where I was going to sit and when I could take breaks. Don’t know when my apprenticeship was over, but they kept me on for almost four decades so I guess that piece of paper was worth the price.

Interns

An internship is a period of work experience offered by an organization for a limited period of time. Once confined to medical graduates, the term is now used for a wide range of placements in businesses, non-profit organizations and government agencies.

Students and graduates looking to gain relevant skills and experience in a particular field typically undertake them. Employers benefit from these placements because they often recruit employees from their best interns, who have known capabilities, thus saving time and money in the long run.

Internships are usually arranged by third-party organizations that recruit interns on behalf of industry groups. Rules vary from country to country about when interns should be regarded as employees. The system can be open to exploitation by unscrupulous employers.

Internships for professional careers are similar in some ways, but not as rigorous as apprenticeships for professions, trade, and vocational jobs. The lack of standardization and oversight leaves the term “internship” open to broad interpretation. Interns may be high school students, college and university students, or post-graduate adults. These positions may be paid or unpaid and are temporary.

Typically, an internship consists of an exchange of services for experience between the intern and the organization. Internships are used to determine if the intern still has an interest in that field after the real-life experience.

In addition, an internship can be used to create a professional network that can assist with letters of recommendation or lead to future employment opportunities. The benefit of bringing an intern into full-time employment is that they are already familiar with the company, their position, and they typically need little to no training.

Internships provide current college students the ability to participate in a field of their choice to receive hands on learning about a particular future career, preparing them for full-time work following graduation.

A student or trainee who works at a trade or occupation in order to gain work experience, sometimes without pay, is an intern.

In the gig society, are part-time workers classified as contractors or interns? What about seasonal workers? Entertainers and artist are often offered employment for exposure.

All employers can now hire new employees on a trial period of 90 days or less without the risk of the employee taking a personal grievance for unjustified dismissal (they may still take a personal grievance on other grounds) in the event that the employee is dismissed during the trial period.

During a long career, there were only two interns. Both were relatives of management looking for a summer babysitter. Neither were assigned to any work or attempted to learn any skills. Whether they were paid or not?

Otherwise learn how to take coffee and doughnut orders.

Pitch Man

What is your pitch?

Sure you show or perform or present your artistic ideas but then how will the person who might invest in your talent select you?

Take it from the folks who manufacture cereal or soap detergent it makes a difference to be the preference.

Being talented is a plus to get attention but to make the ‘sale’ you need to be unique.

The personality that goes along with the audition is your pitch. What is it you can do that makes you stand out from all the others?

If you wish to stay in the chorus line or craft shows or Holiday Inn circuit, then settle for less.

If you want more you must have something the media will pick up to help create your celebrity.

So you want to be an Artist?

What does that mean? What is an Artist?

Like other occupational titles of doctor, lawyer, Indian chief there are all these sub-titles.

An ‘artist’ can be a painter or a designer or a musician or a singer or a dancer… the list goes on and on.

Yet the title ‘artist’ connotes ‘creativity’.

What is ‘creativity’?

Creativity is a phenomenon whereby something new and somehow valuable is formed. The created item may be intangible (such as an idea, a scientific theory, a musical composition, or a joke) or a physical object (such as an invention, a literary work, or a painting).

Scholarly interest in creativity is found in a number of disciplines, primarily psychology, business studies, and cognitive science, but also education, technology, engineering, philosophy (particularly philosophy of science), theology, sociology, linguistics, and economics, covering the relations between creativity and general intelligence, personality type, mental and neurological processes, mental health, or artificial intelligence; the potential for fostering creativity through education and training; the fostering of creativity for national economic benefit, and the application of creative resources to improve the effectiveness of teaching and learning.

So ‘creativity’ is just problem solving.

Don’t forget to put out the tip jar. People don’t want to pay for thinking.

Cover Band

A garage rock band is nothing more than some guys and gals who live in the neighborhood and know some musical instrument and enjoy the same music played on the radio and like to get together and try and duplicate that sound.

If they get good, they might go on to great fame and fortune, but that is for another story.

A garage rock band has to first find a place to make their noise. A room is usually too small to cram the drums in, so it is the basement or the garage. Both spaces have wonderful acoustics and lack enough electricity.

In the maze of extension cords and feeding back microphones, with the smell of oil and the moldy dampness, this rag tag group searches for songs they all know. Once a list is made, each has to find enough chords and note they can play. It is a learning experience.

They may be good enough for the police to come by, but proud parents wanting to show off the skills of their children who couldn’t get a place on the team or be invited to join a fraternity, find events that will accept their sound for free.

Birthday parties, pool parties, bar mitzvahs, school dances, battle of the bands…. It is all a progression.

Each show will get better and better due to practice and bonding together.

To be popular they play dance music heard on the radio and records, but styles change. Players who could reproduce English pop couldn’t fill the sound of horns in funky town. Kids would come and go as the garage band morphed into different forms and configurations.

Some breakaways consider themselves composers but without proper promotion and airplay to convince the kids this was the new sound, they fade away or become local celebrities.

The garage bands that want to take the cover to other’s songs decide on one group and pantomime them.

Tribute bands are cover bands that dress and act and play like what they have seen in concert and YouTube videos of bands that made the Big Time. The audience knows what to expect when they see the promotion for a ‘Grateful Dead tribute band’ or a ‘Pink Floyd tribute band’ or a ‘Kiss tribute band’ or a ‘Captain and Tennille tribute band’. Of course they will never measure up to the original but people like to relive when the music was.

After awhile the drummer decides to get a job at the car wash, the bass player gets caught embezzling from his day job at the bank, the keyboard player impregnates his girlfriend, the singer dies of a bad dose, and the guitar player decides to produce instead of the road.

What about those BIG cover bands?

An orchestra is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which mixes instruments from different families, including bowed string instruments such as violin, viola, cello, and double bass, as well as brass, woodwinds, and percussion instruments, each grouped in sections. Other instruments such as the piano and celesta may sometimes appear in a fifth keyboard section or may stand alone, as may the concert harp and, for performances of some modern compositions, electronic instruments.

A full-size orchestra may sometimes be called a symphony orchestra or philharmonic orchestra. The actual number of musicians employed in a given performance may vary from seventy to over one hundred musicians, depending on the work being played and the size of the venue. The term chamber orchestra (and sometimes concert orchestra) usually refers to smaller-sized ensembles of about fifty musicians or fewer. Orchestras that specialize in the Baroque music of, for example, Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel, or Classical repertoire, such as that of Haydn and Mozart, tend to be smaller than orchestras performing a Romantic music repertoire such as the symphonies of Johannes Brahms. The typical orchestra grew in size throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, reaching a peak with the large orchestras (of as many as 120 players) called for in the works of Richard Wagner, and later, Gustav Mahler.

Orchestras are usually led by a conductor who directs the performance with movements of the hands and arms, often made easier for the musicians to see by use of a conductor’s baton. The conductor unifies the orchestra, sets the tempo and shapes the sound of the ensemble. The conductor also prepares the orchestra by leading rehearsals before the public concert, in which the conductor provides instructions to the musicians on their interpretation of the music being performed.

The leader of the first violin section, commonly called the concertmaster, also plays an important role in leading the musicians. In the Baroque music era (1600–1750), orchestras were often led by the concertmaster or by a chord-playing musician performing the basso continuo parts on a harpsichord or pipe organ, a tradition that some 20th century and 21st century early music ensembles continue. Orchestras play a wide range of repertoire, including symphonies, opera and ballet overtures, concertos for solo instruments, and as pit ensembles for operas, ballets, and some types of musical theatre (e.g., Gilbert and Sullivan operettas).

Amateur orchestras include those made up of students from an elementary school or a high school, youth orchestras, and community orchestras; the latter two typically being made up of amateur musicians from a particular city or region.

This cover band usually comes out dressed to the nines sitting in a semi-circle seated with music stands facing the audience. The maestro stands with his back to the audience (how rude?) and waves all the players to reproduce what is written on the pages in front of them. If the audience approves with applaud, he turns around and takes a bow (as if he did anything more than keep time) then points out the band’s caste system. No one ever introduces the oboe player.

When you buy a ticket, know what you are about to listen to.

Why didn’t I think of that?

Was listening to an interview the other day. It was from ancient history but something caught my eardrob.

The speaker, Mister Robert Wyatt of the progressive musical as semblance called “Soft Machine”, was talking about their sets on stage.

“Why play a one hour concert and not three minute songs?

You do a number and stop and everyone loses attention but if you keeping going continuously they can’t lose attention until you are ready to stop anyway.

Where the group can tune up but the audience shuffles around and lites cigarettes and…”

“Ah Ha” moment!!!

For anyone who performs to an audience, one must understand that the public gets bored easily and given half a chance will wander.

Unlike a book where the reviews have been wonderful but into a couple of chapters you mind starts to glaze over but you plod forward trying to find that sweet spot that will reward your expectations.

Every orchestra can acknowledge that after intermission, half the audience has left the building.

The next time you go to a concert (or check out a YouTube video of your favorite live act) and see all the seemingly confusion between songs. Maybe everyone has to retune or switch instruments or get a drink or fix a plug or take a leak or whatever slows down the show, but it happens.

If there is a good front man (or woman) who can keep the interest focused while all this other humdrum is going on with folks in black all scurrying around the stage and terrible sounds coming out of the speakers in hopes that the delays will be as short as lines waiting for flights.

If you give an audience enough time they will order another drink, settle back into some discussion about why China wants to land on the dark side of the moon, or any other distraction because the music is NOT playing.

I have recordings to remind me of those awkward breaks that the audience had to endure.

The worst were the dance numbers. Get everyone hopping to the keen riffs and pounding beat then a speaker blows out and everything comes to a grinding halt. While repairs or adjustments are being made, the dancers wander off into the distance.

Sometimes a slow song will bring them back to the dance floor so they can hang their sweaty teenage bodies on each other or you might as well pack up.

It is good advice: Keep the show going, no matter what.

Things You Learn If You Pay Attention

There is some science out there realizing one who is described, as ‘artist’, is different from what was expected.

Whether it is mental health or just an extra chromosome, we are different.

While others sit and wonder why, we express ourselves. While others look on, we perform the history, dreams, good and bad of life, seemingly to understand the mystery.

Much of my life I don’t remember.

I can relate to certain dates and places but can’t remember who else was there or what we did.

Yet, I can remember the wallpaper design. The smell of oil ties a connection between living in the mountains and living at the beach. Flashes of images, either recorded in my mind or on paper, give glimpses of a past without sub-titles.

Can you look at a photo and remember the feel of the clothing.

Sensory overload happens when I walk into a room. A room I may have entered a dozen times, my senses gather the lights and shadows, the sounds and the smells, the feel of the room.

Overwhelmed with places to look and explore like opening a book and flipping through the pages. Not only do I see the photos hanging on the wall, but also I notice how they are hung, the placement, the order, the frames, and the mats. The subject of the photo or artwork and how it matches the wall color and the surrounding adornments is more than interior design, but personal taste.

Museums are a difficult traverse. Though designed to be unobtrusive to the artwork, the pedestals, cameras, lighting, sounds of the footsteps and the whispered breathing of participants in this cathedral of artistic presentation become the experience.

There is probably a psychological ‘ism’ for this absorption of awareness, but it is the artist curse.

Don’t lose it in the day-to-day boring rush to check and see if anyone sent you a text about some food they ate or how their baby pooped.

It is a gift.