At one point I’ve wrote a list of venues that I’ve dreamt of performing on. Stages that I dreamed of gracing, and would you believe it, about a year ago I looked at that list again, and I got goose bumps. I’ve done it! Things like that, it’s just crazy. I don’t want to sound like I’m tooting my own horn or bragging. I view myself as a regular girl-next-door, a regular person. But some crazy things have happened to me on this journey that wouldn’t have happened if I had not pursued this. I love Lauryn Hill, and getting the opportunity to open for her at the concert hall or getting the opportunity to perform at the Burton Cummings theatre. There was a benefit concert at the MTS Centre and singing on that stage was insane.
If I told Flo from the past that these things will happen I would have laughed at Flo from the future and said “Come on, let’s be real.”
Those things have given me the faith and the boldness to be like “okay if these things can happen, the sky’s the limit. All things are possible.” Sometimes when I have those down days or down moments. I think to myself, “don’t forget what has happened before. Hold on to your faith, keep on looking forward because the best is yet to come.”
Don’t get into those pity party moments because we all go through those up and downs when we have our vision in mind and we know [it’s] going to be our Mount Everest or our large goal. Sometimes when we look that big goal and it’s so much greater than you, so larger than life and you wonder how you’re going to get there. Baby steps. Which is why when I look at myself and where I’m at, I think “Oh my gosh, this is going to take forever” I need to remind myself that it’s step by step and bit by bit. From where I started to where I am now, things have happened and more is to come.
A: How do you deal with nerves before a performance?
F: Well, I actually heard something that I will never forget that I tell other performers too. I think I as watching an interview on E talk or something. They were saying the greatest performers like Cher, Adele, Madonna get nervous before shows.
Adele, actually, when she had just released her album 21 she was saying how she got so nervous that before a few shows she would projectile vomit. She had a story where she was in Germany on her balcony and she was so nervous that she ended up puking on a fan. From her perspective she’s thinking, “What if I’m not good enough? What if I disappoint all these people who have come to see me?” I was shocked, I couldn’t believe Adele felt the same way.
What really got me was that other than these legends still feeling nervous; I think it was either Cher or Madonna, one of them said that it’s good to feel nervous, like an Olympic athlete before their big feat because that nervousness gets converted into adrenaline. A lot of times, when you have the best killer performance, it’s that adrenaline surging through your veins and arteries.
On top of that, what I got from the show that I’ll never forget, when you stop getting nervous get worried. It means you don’t care anymore, right? And sometimes maybe for smaller performances, where my heart might not be in it, I do okay. From my perspective and from what I know I can do, if I lack lustre and feel that’s it’s a mediocre performance I know I can do better. I find the performances where I’m nervous, and I HATE that nervous feeling, I HATE that feeling where, forget butterflies, BATS are in your stomach and you feel like you are going to puke and you are overthinking. I find those performances that I care so much that I want to do well. That nervousness, as soon as you hit the stage becomes adrenaline and you just kill it.
I don’t like those pre-jitters. But from what I hear everyone; actors, comedians, dancers, professional athletes, they all go through it. It probably won’t go away but that’s okay because it’s normal.
A: How do you balance music with any other obligations you might have?
