Refract

Tuesday, May 11, 2004

In six juries, I've only played my piece with moderate success twice. I've had some fantastic failures, times when I skipped a note, and then got myself confused and had to start over from a much, much earlier place in the piece. Times when I started playing the wrong piece. Times when I had my hands on the wrong notes for up to several measures. Never has my failure been as glorious as today. I started off pretty well for up to about a half a measure. Then the trouble started. During the first section, I completely forgot several chord changes and screwed up the melody royally. But I recovered from that and segued into the next bit smoothly enough that anyone who had no idea what the piece was supposed to sound like may not have noticed. I've expected to have trouble there, and I got past it, only lightly scratched. I figured I could make it through the rest, so I relax and go on autopilot. Problem. 10 measures later, I lose the music. Not only do I have no idea what comes next, I have no idea where I am. So I start improvising a bit, hoping that my fingers will catch up with themselves and be able to go the rest of the way without my brain. Then I lose my mental image of the notes. Now I can't even go back and start over somewhere else, I don't even remember what piece I'm playing. I do remember one thing, though. There are three chords at the end to close out the piece; I remember one of them. So I tell them, ``look, I have no idea what piece I'm even playing, I'm ending this thing,'' and I play that one chord. Then the other one pops in, I play it right away before I can forget what it is, ignoring, of course, tempo and dynamics. Then the final one comes along, and, despite being pianissimo, I play the motherfucker FORTE. And I mean FUCKING FORTE. And, instead of holding it for 6 beats, I hold it for 2, turn around, smile, and say ``oops.''

My piano teacher just looks at me. ``Well, you've never done that before.'' The other one chimes in, ``uh, thank you for coming...have a nice day.''

I. Fucking. Rock.