Festivals and Boys Don't Mix Well

I was out in the hall outside of the performance room, filled with judges. My heart was beating way to fast to be healthy, my hands shaking as if I were a human earthquake. The lungs I had to live with, they were not doing their job as if they wanted everything to end too, just like I did. I felt them, the tears were coming like pools of fire.  I looked up as I knelt on the floor and hoped nobody knew what was behind the failure. 

Just as I left the room, my first partner had packed up his instrument, not even looking me in the eye. As I sat in the hall, my peripheral vision saw the feet of my second partner turning in an uneven circle, and then pointed and step towards the mess that happened to be me. My lungs were still not cooperating, but I managed to cool the pools of fire with my breath. My best friend came over and put his arm around my shoulders, and my partner kneeled beside me.

Of course, it wasn't wasn't just my fault. Why the judges crucified us had nothing to do with our playing abilities. Time screwed us over, and played with my emotions. Time usually does that, it happens in every concept: technology, fate, music. But it wasn't actually that time had screwed us over too much this time. Maybe, just maybe, if I just got over my fear of people judging me based on the fact that I was going to do something wrong I could play better.

So did you guys like that story? Yeah, so that was way too over dramatic, I just felt like typing like that because right now I'm bored, I can't play trombone, and I need something to do. But to get the point, I recently have competed in a festival, hence the title. The festival was called Solo and Ensemble Festival, a festival for small groups of people to compete and stuff. Me being me, competing with other instrumentalists just sounded like so much fun, so I just had to sign up. Me also being me, I was too scared to play a solo, so I picked a partner and he picked a rather difficult piece. It's not that we couldn't learn the piece, it was just that we didn't have enough time to rehearse together. 

The magical book of trombone duets

Courtesy of Amazon

Because guess what? MALE HUMAN PEOPLE JUST HAPPEN TO BE RATHER BAD AT FIGURING OUT TIMES TO WORK TOGETHER. I am not sexist, I promise. It just happens to be that I am jealous of this kids success, being that he’s super smart and super busy, and I know I wouldn’t be able to handle what he has been capable of doing. So kudos to you, William. But moral of the story- y’all need to pick a partner that is able to play with you twice a week before entering a music competition. William and I did not do that bad, so yay. My other partner, Jake, was one point away from qualifying for State with me. So double yay. But I’m only a freshman, and we’ll see how it goes next year.

Our high school actually hosted the festival, which was probably the coolest part. Next year I believe we take a bus somewhere over the rainbow to another high school, so it will be an adventure. :).