I suppose I am becoming a better performer, if only because I listen to the language I am trying to speak.
I am a bad performer. Before recitals I sit backstage, watching the doors. I pray for a few to enter, for hush and mercy; yet my prayers are seldom met. As people come in, my nerves gather like frost on a window, and I lean into the cold, listening to my own breath.
I wish to fast-forward to the moment when I am finished, as though time might slip away by a back staircase. I think of the passing of time, of all the ways I might falter, of the pieces I am about to play suddenly becoming strangers. I lift my eyes to the audience. There are many of them, and they seem to watch for my misstep, as if an incorrect note might be a carnival of laughter.
Waiting for the recital to begin, I want it to start; yet when it is finally my turn I shrink into tremor. My hands are at once dry and moist and cold. I walk toward the piano, and the lights blazes into my eyes. I set my trembling leg upon the stool. My hands slip from the keys as I play; I press the pedal too lightly, or release it too suddenly, so a space of silence slides into the music like a pause in speech. I am a bad performer. Then I step back from the stage and think, “I have fast-forwarded to after the performance, but not in the way I imagined.”
Dread accompanies each performance. Each ending arrives with sleeplessness; no matter how I practice, it seems to conclude as if I have not learned the language of the music at all. My IB music grades in presenting reflect this anxiety, and I feared that performing would be my Achilles’ heel, the gate by which I might not enter college.
But then I spoke with my piano professor, seeking counsel. He asked me, why would you be nervous? If you play a wrong note, the audience must hear it, and they are not there to mock your failure. Music is a language; think of it as a speech. As long as you say what you mean, it does not matter how you say it, whether you stumble or mumble. When you strive to be expressive, you enter a zone where you speak the language, and wrong notes become merely possibilities, not judgments.
Today I return to that thought of music as a language after a satisfactory recital. I’m improving. My hands remain moist and dry and cold, yet I feel the audience is not waiting to mock me. I perform with quiet honesty, and for the first time I sense the music breathe through me rather than me through it. I play as though I am saying something essential, and the silence between the notes feels like agreement.
I suppose I am becoming a better performer, if only because I listen to the language I am trying to speak, rather than listening to the fear in the gaze of the audience.