6 September 2016 – Audition Day
It’s 5:30 am, I’ve gotten up early to get ready. My audition time is in the 10:00 am group; I’ll have to leave at around 7:15 am in order to get there by 9:00 to have time to decompress from driving and warm up.
In the past I’ve found that I am playing my best–most connected, loosest, good sound etc.–when I’ve been playing for a while, like several hours, as weird as that seems. I haven’t focused on finding a way to shorten that time. I won’t figure that out today, but maybe that’s a good subject for future study.
Yesterday afternoon and evening I was definitely feeling the symptoms of nervousness. Nothing major, but I could tell that I was less interested in conversations, kind of wanting to just be away from everyone. Sunday evening I had done something to my back and since it didn’t go away overnight, much of yesterday was painful. I saw a massage therapist, and that helped a lot, although not immediately. I slept well last night, and although I haven’t yet tried to play this morning (others are still sleeping, right?) I’m optimistic that the back will not be a major factor today.
So now I’m just getting ready to go. And while I’m still feeling optimistic, in general, my mood is tempered by something that’s a hybrid of realism and fatalism. I don’t play any of the excerpts perfectly. Perfectly is the thing that would guarantee a win. I’ll just have to play less imperfectly that other auditionees. The idealist would like to play perfectly. The realist recognizes it’s just as much about who else shows up as it is about one’s own preparation. The fatalist mopes, knowing it’s not in his own control.
I’m honestly not sure what’s the healthiest attitude … although as I write those words, I know “more positive” is a better kind of attitude than “more negative.” But I don’t want to walk out of my house this morning whistling a cheery tune and dancing a jig in a kind of hyper-cheerful way. That would be setting myself up for disappointment. At the same time, a dour, gloomy grimace is not the right face to take to the audition.
I’m sure that from the outside of this process there is some mood or attitude that is obviously the right one to take. But I’m inside the process right now, so I’m just chugging along doing me. Even a moments’ reflection reminds me that I’ve staked a lot of “who I am” on being successful in music. And to be frank, I personally have had only glimpses of the kind of success that I want in my life. The decision something like 18 months ago to jump back on the audition train was a decision to put myself back out there, to risk my ego yet again in the hope of resuming that voyage to musical-career-achievement that I have chased with more or less–and more often, less–vigor for most of my adult life.
We’ll see a little later today what has come of this latest chapter in that life. That’s heavy, heavy sentiment to bring with me today–so I hope that by writing it here, I am leaving some of it behind, that I won’t have to carry it into the audition with me. It is, after all, pretty maudlin and dramatic, all that stuff in the previous paragraph. So I’ll say it again, as I have several times before in this blog: I’ve gained (and re-gained) a lot during the preparation for this audition, and the others I have recently taken. Even if I crash and burn during my performance today, nothing will take away the skills I’ve developed (and re-developed). And I’ll use those skills in whatever is coming next.
Alright, enough. There’s preparations to be done, and printing the map, and packing the music and gathering up headphones and lunch and all the various bits . . .
Tags: audition
Good luck today! Be the least imperfect one there! 🙂
Thanks Tom!
I’m afraid that by 11:30 am I was on my way home, imperfect as before. There were a few who were less imperfect than others, and a couple of them will win the job.