Jeremy: We’ve got onto this topic that I absolutely loved in the book – post-performance recovery stages. It’s the idea that there are particular stages that you go through, and like I said, even knowing that they exist was very helpful.

David: I think the immediate stage of post recovery is one where we’re in a physiologically altered state of consciousness. And if the concert or performance has gone well, you’re on an absolute high, and you’re thinking to yourself “Oh, I love this, I just want to keep on doing this”. Whereas a short time before you went on, you’re thinking “Why do I do this, why do I put myself through it? Why aren’t I doing something normal like everyone else?”

Jeremy: Absolutely!

David: So of course you’re revelling in this wonderful state. And if the performance hasn’t gone well, or you don’t think it’s gone well, you’re getting the opposite extreme, you’re very down on yourself. And you’ve got to remember that either of those reactions are extreme, in the sense that even if you’re feeling down on yourself, the performance probably hasn’t gone as bad as it feels to you at that moment.

So when people are coming up to us afterwards, whatever they’re saying to us, we’re not receiving it with the normal state of mind. And this is why when people say things like “I really loved your performance” but you think it wasn’t a great performance, you think they’re just putting it on. If you’ve done a really great performance and some people seem quite lukewarm, you think “Well, what’s wrong with them?”

Jeremy: That is so annoying!

David: I had a friend of mine who’s a singer and singing teacher telling me recently that she played keyboards as accompaniment to an opera singer friend of hers who was doing a recital. And she’s a competent keyboard player but that’s not her main instrument. And she thought she was doing really well on the piano, and she really got into the performance, and he was wonderful. She said afterwards people kept coming up and congratulating him and commenting on his wonderful performance, and no-one said anything to her. And she thought she’d done really well!

Jeremy: Yes, well as a professional accompanist I know that one…

David: So it’s a very touchy time after the performance. It can be wonderful but it can also be difficult. And then the next day, well then after that of course you’ve got the winding down period which can start during the night when you can’t go to sleep because your mind’s racing, even though you feel incredibly weary. There are two parts of the autonomic nervous system – the sympathetic nervous system which is the ON switch, the one that gets us energised, and the parasympathetic system which is the OFF switch, the one that calms us down to get ready for sleep. Well, they’re fighting between each other to see who becomes dominant. If you’re thrust back into other activities the next day – teaching or doing administration – that can actually help you get over that post-performance low. But if you’re just going back into your normal rehearsals, or you’re not having to be responsible to anyone else, that low could be intensified because suddenly there’s no attention on you anymore.

Jeremy: You talk also about what happens immediately after the performance, and that this can be part of that coming-down thing. And I noticed after I’d read that particular section – I want to talk about the concert after I’ve done it. If there’s nobody around or if I’m not going home in the car with anybody, then I’ll ring Gillyanne and we will talk it through. And it’s really important to me that I talk through certain aspects of the performance.

David: Yes, it’s almost like a de-briefing.

Jeremy: Absolutely.

David: And I think if you’re playing or performing with others, they can be the ideal or the immediate people you can do it with, if you can sit around afterwards with them and do a bit of a de-brief. That is part of your cognitive process, part of your way of starting to let go of the performance and to move on. Whereas if you can’t do that de-brief, it’s like it’s still buzzing and you’re still caught up in the performance, and it takes longer to let go.

Jeremy: What’s the third stage?

David: Well the third stage would be the one-to-seven-days afterwards, and this totally depends on what type of performer you are, whether you’re a complete professional performer, or whether you’ve got teaching or other professional activities. And that’s going from the extreme of having everyone focusing on you and being incredibly focused on yourself and the performance, to then having nothing to focus on and nobody focusing on you. So it can be quite a letdown or quite an adjustment. It could be positive – for some people it’s quite a relief to have the performance over and go and do some normal things and just be a normal nobody for a while.

Jeremy: I know one of the things I love doing - I know I’m talking about myself, but hey! – after I’ve done either a show or a tour, is to stay in town after the show leaves. And I’ve done this several times because I’ve MD’d tours. The show will go off somewhere else or will have finished, and I’ll stay in town and I’ll do the holiday thing. It’s what I consider to be “doing the ordinary stuff”. And that’s really good for me.

David: I would call that savouring the experience. So when we have an experience, we can savour it in different ways. And I guess what you’re describing is you’ve been there for a job, you’ve done the job, now you want to wind down, and you want to enjoy some of the other aspects of that experience, which is just being a normal tourist in an interesting town, or somewhere you’ve never been to before, or just doing normal things.