I took a risk this week by going to a Shawn Colvin / Lyle Lovett concert at the University of Maine. You might be wondering, “what’s so risky about that?” As I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed that sometimes being around a lot of people makes me anxious. As a result, I probably spend more time at home than I should because I’m comfortable there. My good friends know this and have been on a mission to help me be more social. Don’t get me wrong, I am a social person. I’m just anxious about it. 🙂
So my friend Val called me a couple of weeks ago and said, “for my birthday I really want to go to a concert with you.” My first reaction was telling her that I was really touched. My reaction in my head was, “oh no.” It’s not that I didn’t want to hang out with my friend, I did. I just had a vision in my head that concerts were really loud and had a lot of people around and I was feeling really anxious. I said, “sure I’ll go.” For the next week I was still really anxious because part of me really wanted to stay home like I usually do. However, I didn’t want to disappoint my friend, so Tuesday night I headed to the University of Maine.
First, I got to catch up with Val over veggie burgers at the Bear Brew Pub on campus. They were really good, I highly recommend them. It was really good to catch up with her. And that was a lot of fun. After dinner, we headed to the Collins Center next door to go to the concert. Truth be told, I was also a little nervous because I didn’t really know a lot about the singers performing except that Lyle Lovett had been married to Julia Roberts about 25 years ago. And Shawn Colvin had a top 40 hit that I knew back in the 90’s. My friend on the other hand is a huge fan. I was a little scared that I wouldn’t like the music because two and a half hours is a long time to sit, even though I sit most of the time anyway. HA HA.
So, Lyle and Shaw came out together which I thought was really interesting. Apparently, they had been friends for a long time and sung on each other’s records. They sat down with their guitars and took turns playing songs. I’ll be honest, I couldn’t really understand everything that they were saying because I didn’t know the words to a lot of their songs. But, I really liked the tone of their voices and that was a lot of fun for me to listen to.
There were a couple of times that I did start to get anxious but there were a couple of things that I did. One, I noticed that the lights on the stage reflected off their guitars in the dark theatre. I really enjoyed watching the pattern of the lights (except the one time that it was shining directly in my eyes, that hurt 🙂 ). There were a few times that I would just close my eyes and breathe. Sometimes something they sang, or the tone of their voices would make me think of something from my past. That was also a lot of fun.
After the concert my friend and I were talking while I was waiting for my mom to pick me up. What we didn’t realize was that my mom was locked out of the building. She could see us but we couldn’t see her. Apparently, she spent about ten minutes waving her arms and jumping up and down trying to get our attention. Someone left and when he opened the door asked my mom if he could help her and she said yes that she was trying to get our attention. Afterward we all had a big laugh about it.
I’m really glad Val asked me to go because it got me out of my comfort zone and I really had a good time.
