Cracked Note

We were best friends in high school and could still be considered that four years later. Long after my parents had gone to bed, we potatoed on my couch and sat staring in astonishment at the TV. We had attached the camcorder to the television, and on the screen were hormone-laced skits we had produced as voice-cracking 14 year olds, the faces of classmates who now seem like more than a distant memory, and recordings of our high school band concerts.

One particular concert I wanted to skip. I hadn't watched any tape of it since it had happened, and not because I had yet to pop in the archived video. I live on home videos and am the type to rewatch them to the extent one would watch their favorite movie: to the degree where every scene is memorized and little hidden moments emerge. For me, that concert was one I wanted to erase from memory, to never relive those cracked notes again.

As I reached once again for the fast forward button, the friend sitting next to me-- the same friend sitting next to me during that very concert-- laughed off my actions and told me to "face my fears." He did so in an obviously lighthearted and joking matter, but beneath the sarcasm and hyperbole stood some truth. I joked about the trauma that came from cracking and flat-out splattering poorly executed notes during my first classical trumpet solo in front of an audience, but the truth was that reliving the embarrassment still proved uncomfortable.

Had it merely been a goof-up that was easy to get over, I wouldn't have my post-reaction to the disaster so vividly still in memory (I stared blankly at my sheet music and remarked to Andrew, "Oh my God."). The tape should have been played long ago, but I had not allowed myself to see the incident beyond the eyes of a grandiose 14 year old. Everything is either utopian or catastrophic at that age. Your hormones are manic just as you're beginning to experience that real world your parents told you about. There's little room for grey.

We watched the full 25 minutes of that concert, and at about the two-thirds mark we knew it was coming. You could see me increasingly rock in my chair and flutter my lips in preparation for my first classical trumpet solo. The first 3 or 4 notes came out as planned, but the next 10 or 11 did not. They were too low, they were too high, they didn't come out at all.

But this wasn't the disaster I had convinced myself had taken place. It will never go on my highlight reel of musical performances, but it was little more than an inexperienced trumpet player making typical novice errors at an unfortunate time. Perhaps looking at the situation outside of the kid with clear braces and three zits on his forehead helped me put the mishap into proper proportion. It's just always been easier to deal with failure by burying it into subconscious and not dealing with it. Easier, not healthier.