The audience claps and you stand up to take a bow. The claps rustle through your ears like the beating of human drums, filled with encouragement and gratitude. It was an alright performance: a few trips here and there, a memory slip that was going to happen but didn’t, and an all too loud, perfect cadence at the end of the Exposition. But you made it through. Sound. Alive.
The claps die down as your eyes move from staring down at the stage floor and back up to the audience. Emotionless. As you turn towards the steps to walk down the stage the claps disappear completely. All that is left is the growing screams of the impatience of the next performer, waiting to do a slow run up the stage and do what you just did, all over again. You feel the spotlight escape you as you near the top of the stairs, feeling something you have not felt in a long time: freedom. Suddenly, stage fright and memory slips are foreign concepts to you. Suddenly, you need not lie in bed night after night, worrying of what “might” happen or what “should” happen. It is over now.
You make your way down the stairs and weave through the seats to find where your purse is sitting. Your dad looks up at you and gives your arm a reassuring and congratulatory squeeze. You look over at your mom to gauge some sort of response or emotion; nothing. She doesn’t even turn to look at you, as though you never even left that stage, and that the empty bench on stage is actually still holding up your body. She does not look at you because she knows. She knows about the missed B, the almost memory slip, and the too strong cadence. She heard it all and she has convinced herself that your performance was anything but flawless, and you’ll pay for it later.
You take your purse and sit down at the chair, checking to see the time. Eight minutes passed since you left the chair to go on the stage. In just eight minutes, your world shifted, and the entire body shed off the weight that burdened you for the last three months. Was it worth it? Was the performance worth it? Was it worth it to hold onto that weight of fear and anxiety for all this time? For a quarter of a year you did not sleep peacefully at night. All for those eight minutes.
At that moment you may have felt like it was not. At that moment it feels like it was all for nothing because in the end, you still made mistakes, and you still gave a less than perfect performance. What you may have forgotten, however, is what you were able to share. For in this dark, scary, dangerous, and uncertain world, for eight minutes straight you offered a light. For eight minutes you brought sensitivity and creativity into the world, and brightened it. By offering a part of your hard work and accomplishment in the form of music, you’ve lit up the skies after sunset and shone rays through the caves of uncertainty.
The message is more powerful than the person. We are more than just the wrong notes we play or how we convey the loudness of a forte. We are more than our memory slips and long passages. We are couriers of a greater message, which is to bring light with our music, whether in a one hour’s practice, a fifteen minute jam session with friends, or an eight minute less-than-perfect performance.