Thief of Joy

Today is a momentous day in my area for 11th and 12th grade musicians. It’s Mid-State tryout day, and on the flute side of things, there are likely to be 100 or more students auditioning for 22 spots and 4 alternate placements. To say it’s a bloodbath…well, that’s kind. It’s the usual kind of audition: scales, prepared etudes and sight-reading, with two extra etudes for piccolo if you’d like to be considered for that chair. The top five ranked flutes are automatically going to All-State in April, with the highest one who wants to be there going to the orchestra, and the rest going into the All-State band. It is a blind audition, which is nice. I include all of that so that you can understand the sort of pressure these students are under…well, the pressure they put themselves under! I try hard to help them find the music in the mayhem, but not add to the pressure. They pressure themselves plenty!

Last Sunday, one of my regulars was having her lesson and absolutely melting down. She’s a senior who made All-State in 10th grade and didn’t in 11th, and the mental smackdown that put on her has been something we’ve worked on overcoming all year. My take on it is that one quick audition on one day is no referendum on her playing, that she does so many beautiful things all year long. I want her to find the love she has for the flute and try to express that instead of worrying about how well anyone else will play. But that’s easy for me to say!

Anyway, she has a new nemesis at her school, a student who has recently started lessons (with someone else, not me) and has improved a lot because of that. This student has moved into the Wind Ensemble at their school and is sitting two chairs away from my student. I’ve heard about this girl, because second chair in that band is one of my 10th graders, and the girl in question talks a lot of smack. Talks a big game, but hasn’t, as yet, been able to back it up. Still, she’s in my student’s head, and that was the source of the tears. She’s scared to death that she won’t do well, that this other girl will beat her, and that she won’t make top band and then miss out on some other opportunities that come with it in her county.

My advice to her was this: you can’t control what anyone is going to think about your playing, or what anyone else is going to do. All you can control is what you can control, and that’s you. Accuracy is within your control. What the notes, rhythms and articulations are is knowable; they won’t change. (And readers, she was prepared on that front three weeks ago. She’s just giving herself a mental wedgie!) How much sleep you get the night before the audition, what you eat for breakfast that morning, how much water you drink—all those things are within your control. How you practice this week is in your control. So do your best to worry about those things and not what you can’t control.

Auditions like this feel so big to teenagers. I remember, because I grew up in this region, exactly how fraught it is. But the biggest truth is this: once today is over, officially, the last time anyone will ever care who made Mid-State in 2024 is also over, and there’s no bigger equalizer of fortunes than the first semester of college, when practicing is finally, officially your job. Of course I hope she’ll do well today, but if she doesn’t? She’s still my wonderful student, still someone with lots to say with the flute, still someone with worth. Comparison, as Teddy Roosevelt said, is the thief of joy. Let’s normalize learning to worry about ourselves and our own personal best, because the only person we need to beat is the us we were yesterday.