Mattison Crossing - Assisted Living And Memory Care , Manalapan

Mattison Crossing - Assisted Living and Memory Care Manalapon was the 13th location where I played. After taking around a two-week break from performing publicly, my skills were rusty; I didn't expect my performance to be perfect this time around. When my dad and I arrived, we realized this was another large center, meaning we would have to carry our equipment far. After riding elevators and going through long hallways, I met up with the audience. A cool detail that I noticed while I was setting up was that they had an event log for the day, and for 2:00, they wrote "Shrey's Music Performance". It made my day knowing that the center valued my contribution to their residents. When I started performing and giving my usual speech, I noticed that the audience wasn't active; some seemed half-asleep or bored. Despite this, I tried not to let that demotivate me when I would play.

While I was playing, the rustiness was evident; I was making obvious mistakes with the audio. However, it didn't seem to matter as the audience didn't seem to care that much about my performance. I got the occasional clap from some of the audience, but most of the audience remained dead silent. Something funny that happened was that me and another audience member - one of the only ones paying attention - were laughing at the fact that the audience was dead silent. Regardless, I pushed past this obstacle and tried to play as good as possible. At the end, I sort of felt empty about the performance, but fortunately, the staff at the center took some interest in our cause. After describing to them the main goal of the Om Foundation, we were lucky enough to convince them to sign up. Maybe this performance wasn't the perfect welcoming back, but it still helped me to pick up where I left off.