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I set Coco’s guitar gently on the bed and forced myself to keep my steps even and slow, so it wouldn’t be quite so clear I was running away like an animal, to find a porch to hide under where I could lick my wounds in private.
The second the door closed behind me, I heard a sound, and then Ven yelled, “Ow, what the hell!?” I ran to my own room before I could hear the response.
Later that night, curled up in bed after talking to Caleb, I tried to pick apart my extreme reaction to the band’s words. It was true that I wasn’t always the best at letting criticism roll off my back. Maybe I tended to take things a little too personally. But I was used to bouncing ideas back and forth with the band. I’d learned to strip away Ven’s abrasiveness to get at the root of his comments, to be patient with Ethan because he liked to work everything out in his head before he weighed in, to not snap at Coco for considering every single possibility before settling on something.
So, yeah, I wasn’t always the best at hearing criticism of my songs, but I definitely didn’t usually feel this wounded. I felt like I had shown them my tender, unguarded belly and they had pecked it to blood with sharp beaks.
Like they had drawn a circle around what Riven was, and in doing so had put me on the other side of the line.
I fell asleep with the lights on, the blankets pulled over my head, and when I woke up the next afternoon, to catch our flight to the Cleveland show, I could hardly drag myself out of bed. When we got picked up in Cleveland, I watched the familiar landscape out the window of our limo, and the minute I saw signs for I-90, my stomach clenched.
Coco and Ethan were sweet to me, offering to order me an ice cream when they sent someone out to get one, since they knew I hated when we played in Ohio. But I couldn’t feel anything. I wasn’t nervous for the show. Or excited. I wasn’t dreading it. Wasn’t even upset thinking about shit from when I was a kid, living here. I just felt…blank. Zombie blank.
I finally got my shit together in time for the performance, but the magic wasn’t there. The crowd didn’t seem to notice. The band didn’t seem to notice. But I felt like I was floating somewhere, nudged a half-tick outside my body and unable to realign.
I had texted Caleb from backstage before we went on, 2 more days <3, but he didn’t write back until much later, and by then, we’d already done the show. I’d sung my music in front of a screaming crowd—the thing that usually brought me so much joy—and it had felt like dust.
* * *
—
The first time Riven played a big show in Cleveland, I called my mom and told her that I’d put aside tickets for her and my dad at the box office. After all, my parents had always come to my piano recitals, and my orchestra performances during high school. I’d understood they weren’t interested in coming to see me play my own music in some smoky open mic night hundreds of miles away, but this was a real show. An arena show, less than an hour from their front door.
She paused a beat before answering, and I barreled forward, telling her I’d really like it if they would come see me play, and how cool it was to be playing the concert hall where I’d first seen all the bands that I’d loved in high school. She said they would certainly try, then rushed me off the phone because she had to finish making dinner.
I’d played my heart out, felt anticipation similar to what I’d felt when I used to play recitals at my parents’ urging: the impulse to do a good job, to impress them, in the hopes of making them proud of me. Only it wasn’t just them, it was the whole crowd. If I could impress the whole crowd, touch them with our music, and my parents saw that—were surrounded by it—how could they fail to be proud of me?
The next morning, I called my mom from the hotel and asked what she’d thought of the show. Before the whole question was out of my mouth, I realized my mistake.
“Oh, Theo,” she’d said, a hint of irritation in her voice, as if she were angry with me for making her tell me this. “Your father had a long day at work and you know how late these things start. It just wasn’t a good night for it. Next time, all right? Maybe next time you can come play over the weekend.”
