Seinfeld gets psyched [like Horowitz]

From Daniel McGinn, Life’s Work: An Interview with Jerry Seinfeld, Harvard Business Review (2017):

How do you get psyched up before going onstage?

You don’t have to get psyched up—the audience will take care of that. You walk out in front of 3,000 people who have paid $75 or $100, they’re sitting there saying, “We want to laugh right now,” and you feel that. But every comedian, like every athlete, has a little routine. Mine is to look at my notes until five minutes before the show. When my tour producer says, “Five minutes,” I put on the jacket, and when the jacket goes on, it’s like my body knows, “OK, now we’ve got to do our trick.” And then I stand, and I like to just walk back and forth, and that’s it. That’s my little preshow routine. I never vary it. It just feels comfortable.

Compare this with Vladimir Horowitz, the classical pianist:

The moment that I feel that cutaway – the moment I am in uniform – it's like a horse before the races. You start to perspire. You feel already in you some electricity to do something.

From Helen Epstein. Music Talks: Conversations with Musicians. McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1987, p. 10.

Performance is performance. It's a specific kind of behavioral mode.