I love meeting people in the industry to talk about the events and situations they have encountered. My favorite topic is to talk about the odd or strange things that have happened and hearing about how they overcame those situations. Our industry is so dynamic, no two shows are ever the same and our partners in this industry have all had some interesting experiences.
I get the most out of learning about how people have problem-solved different situations in the past or how they have overcome something unexpected. It’s truly fascinating to hear how they defeated barriers they have encountered over time. I was recently talking to someone about these same topics, and they commented on it all just being like Murphy’s Law. If you don’t know what Murphy’s Law is, it’s often summed up with the common adage of what can go wrong, will go wrong. I found this outlook very interesting and thought to myself – we’ve all been there.
The equipment stops working; the team wasn’t notified of a drastic time change, the truck is three hours late, and more. Some things we can quickly recover from, others will cause us hours of extra work to correct, but in the end, the show will go on. We continuously work to overcome everything that goes wrong for the good of the show. These are the things we like to complain about, but they never stop us from doing it again. Every situation, once experienced and conquered, turns into a great story, often shared during happy hour. I’ve written about some of the situations I’ve had to work through such as an artist not showing up and not having a proper budget for a building; each situation being overcome in diverse ways with skills I have learned over time. We’ll never know the answers to everything, but we can often use our previous experiences to overcome new obstacles.
In the beginning, some of these will seem like show stoppers, your blood pressure might go up and anxiety may kick in, but you will get through it. With time those issues get easier and new ones pop up, but as you gain experience, problem-solving gets faster and it’s easier to tackle the new ones because you have a better foothold than you did before. Problems that arise often kick-start our adrenaline. Some of us thrive on the challenges that Murphy’s Law seems to provide. It’s an adventure to overcome the obstacles, to adapt to the changing situation in seconds, and to create a solution so the event can move forward. Eventually, we have gained enough skills where these issues don’t seem as big as they once were.
Murphy’s Law gets the best of us from time to time, but if we keep learning through these issues, we’ll only get better for the next show. I also think we might be trained a bit like Pavlov’s dogs; coming back for more food whenever the bell rings. There is something within the event world that keeps bringing us back time and time again. Maybe we’ve been conditioned like Pavlov’s dogs, but instead of a bell and food, we hear gig and think something along the lines of, oh this will be fun!
So, here’s hoping Murphy’s Law doesn’t kick in for your next show, but your Pavlov’s senses keep you coming back for more. What can go wrong, will go wrong – but hey let’s do that again and learn from the last time!