Imagine Being Laughed At

Around ten months before I started highschool, I auditioned to play in my future school’s strings ensemble and to be a cellist in their orchestral strings regional arts program. What a mouthful, right? The audition went like this: greet the teacher, play two scales, play a piece, talk about myself, get my loyalty to the crown (otherwise known as the expensive instrument i carried around) questioned, leave with a headache.

It was my first experience performing in front of people, and all I can remember now is that I was nervous enough that I almost broke my bow before I even went into the audition room. My personal teacher at the time was an old guy that was starting to look like old Saint Nick and sounded like a budget version of Arnold Schwarzenegger; he talked to me the week after the audition to ease my worries and told me that it was normal to be anxious, that it went away with time.

Except it didn’t. Nope. It only got worse. Much worse

I got accepted into the program around a month after the audition, and I met my fellow musicians on my first day as a niner (what we call freshmen here). I was, un-shockingly, nervous. I feared being called out on the stupidest things (You’ve only been playing for 3 years? You don’t know how to play Bach?). Which never happened, we were all on even ground. But that fear of being embarrassed in front of everyone only got insurmountably worse, and every time I thought I got used to performing my brain increased the stakes with intrusive thoughts and knocked me off the confidence charts.

That fear ruled me for the whole year, and it undoubtedly ruined my interactions and my grades. I was nervous around everyone and was constantly trying to seem like I was the Bee’s Knees™. Getting called out in class about my bow technique was like being put on trial and getting singled out to play was my personal torture. Thinking back on it, all these small confrontations all led up to one crew-up in February. The Performance Exam Incident.

Ah, The P.E. Incident. Suitably named because the nervous sweat I broke into elevated my heart rate more than an hour of cardio, so I count it as an extreme sport. They should really consider adding it to the gym curriculum. It’s got all the usual signs of a good exercise: sweat, heart rates, the shame of not doing it right, etcetera, etcetera.

It was the worst performance of my life thus far. I was nervous going into it, I was anxious waiting to play, and I was screwed tighter than a pickle jar lid during it. All I had to do was play and I botched it.

We were performing in front of our fellow classmates and getting assessed for a practical exam mark. I was walking through the depths of despair and coming out of it with a participation ribbon. It was all pain and no gain; I would have gladly failed if it meant never having to perform again. Maybe. Probably. Okay maybe not, I put too much emphasis on grades. But I would definitely have taken a way out of it if it made sense. I sat for about twenty minutes listening to others go before me, some playing perfectly and some messing up here and there. I felt like a time bomb about to explode. As I was about to find out, it was more like a being dragged by a current underwater; lethal, but no one could see me struggling, no one could even hear me scream. The only evidence was the air bubbles rising up to the surface, the effects of anxiousness that people could see.

When it was finally time to go up and make a fool of myself, I did exactly that. I sat down in front of everyone, and I started playing. My bow was shaking, the notes I played sounded scratchy. But I didn’t even comprehend that happened until it was over; my mind was blank. It was truly the feeling of being submerged underwater. You don’t know what to do or what to think, but at the same time you acknowledge that you need to start punching up. I didn’t. I stopped half way through and forgot the notes. I forgot how to read sheet music. I think I paused for a full thirty seconds before I did something.

“Sorry, miss. I’ll just, yeah. Sorry”

I got a nod in response, and I kept playing. Pretty badly. I thought I was being laughed at and mocked by all thirty students. I think my grade was seventy percent on that performance. I could have gotten a ninety if I got over my nerves before it. Unfortunately I didn’t. Instead of playing the song, the song played me. This was just the worst of several sad situations. I’ve gotten better at, you know, not freaking out. I think this is mostly because I’ve since connected better with other people in the program with me, and through it I have found a sense of solidarity. We all truly despise performing, we all agree that nerves suck the life out of you. One friend of mine (when she was having a diva moment) said she would rather be dead than have to perform again; after she finished playing her exam repertoire to the teacher last January, “at least I’m not dead” were the first words to come out of her mouth. All in all, most musicians agree that our nerves come from a fear of embarrassing ourselves.

Talking with my friends outside of the program (and reflecting on my own experiences), I know that this feeling is generally universal. You open your door in the morning and you're afraid you’ll trip on your face later in front of a crowd of people. Or you get intrusive thoughts popping up like spam email: what if I fail? What if I fall? What if I get called stupid? What if I look stupid? What if I knock into someone and spill my food all over their shirt and they get really offended in the middle of the cafeteria and it draws a lot of attention and I try to help but they get mad at me á la Sharpay Evans in High School Musical? Nobody likes being embarrassed. In the end that fear tends to make you mess things up. Like cello performances. Or first dates, or job interviews.

Fear of embarrassment. Lovely little cockroach, isn't it?