I am grateful that when I messed up today - and knew it - no one told me otherwise. I felt pretty bad about it as it was and if I'd been told 'it wasn't that bad' I would have felt even worse. Why I messed up on that particular piece of music in that particular way, I'll probably never know. I had it in my mind 'not too rush' which I've been prone to doing, but to end up being a bar or two ahead of the others in the group before I even reached the [my] problematic areas, that was bad, bad, bad.
What is even more humiliating, I couldn't work out where I needed to be to be in time with the others (nothing sounded familiar) and kept on playing while thinking 'This is just sounding worse and worse and they must all know it's me at fault'. Eventually I finished several notes ahead of the others, holding my last note much longer than it should have been held. At least when we then repeated the final section, we were all together again but the audience must have wondered why the piece sounded so awful in the middle. This may not have been a problem if it had been a twentieth century piece, but baroque music is usually more ... ahem ... pleasing to the ears. And today it wasn't pleasing! (I love the dear lady who said that the music was 'intriguing'! That's one way of describing what we produced this afternoon.)
What is perhaps so frustrating, is that it has never happened before - at least with that piece. There was another piece I was more anxious about playing and yet I came in at all the right times (I think), surprising myself immensely. I guess that's something.
And why, oh why, did I breathe in the middle of my two bar solo? The refrain in my head was 'Don't breathe. Don't breathe' and even though in practice I've sometimes run out of air, I don't think I've taken a breath in the middle before. But I messed up and did today. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
As I see it, I have a number of [limited] options:
1. Cry and eat lots of chocolate;
2. Stop performing;
3. Shrug it off and move on;
4. Practice my look of disdain and next time focus it on the flautist to my right so that the audience thinks she is the one who messed up (warning to DIL#2 who might like to stand on my left in future - by the way I discovered this trick online);
5. Learn from my mistakes;
6. Quit the flute;
7. Decide I'm a complete failure (perhaps a bit extreme for one messed up Music Society concert with an audience roughly the size of two rugby teams - even if right now I feel that it's true) and give up on everything;
8. Cast on another pair of socks.
At the moment, one, two, six and eight are the most attractive. Perhaps I'll change my mind in a day or so ... but right now I doubt it.
What is even more humiliating, I couldn't work out where I needed to be to be in time with the others (nothing sounded familiar) and kept on playing while thinking 'This is just sounding worse and worse and they must all know it's me at fault'. Eventually I finished several notes ahead of the others, holding my last note much longer than it should have been held. At least when we then repeated the final section, we were all together again but the audience must have wondered why the piece sounded so awful in the middle. This may not have been a problem if it had been a twentieth century piece, but baroque music is usually more ... ahem ... pleasing to the ears. And today it wasn't pleasing! (I love the dear lady who said that the music was 'intriguing'! That's one way of describing what we produced this afternoon.)
What is perhaps so frustrating, is that it has never happened before - at least with that piece. There was another piece I was more anxious about playing and yet I came in at all the right times (I think), surprising myself immensely. I guess that's something.
And why, oh why, did I breathe in the middle of my two bar solo? The refrain in my head was 'Don't breathe. Don't breathe' and even though in practice I've sometimes run out of air, I don't think I've taken a breath in the middle before. But I messed up and did today. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
As I see it, I have a number of [limited] options:
1. Cry and eat lots of chocolate;
2. Stop performing;
3. Shrug it off and move on;
4. Practice my look of disdain and next time focus it on the flautist to my right so that the audience thinks she is the one who messed up (warning to DIL#2 who might like to stand on my left in future - by the way I discovered this trick online);
5. Learn from my mistakes;
6. Quit the flute;
7. Decide I'm a complete failure (perhaps a bit extreme for one messed up Music Society concert with an audience roughly the size of two rugby teams - even if right now I feel that it's true) and give up on everything;
8. Cast on another pair of socks.
At the moment, one, two, six and eight are the most attractive. Perhaps I'll change my mind in a day or so ... but right now I doubt it.
Comments
I've learned that sometimes our brains just malfunction. :) It happens to us all... and the times where we can't figure out the whys are the most frustrating, but it happens to all of us. If we quit everything we ever made a mistake with, well, I personally wouldn't have much left to do in life. :) Could you pass me some chocolate please? :)