| i was one of those orchestra kids. don't get any funny ideas about class or money or anything, by the way-- public schools have orchestras, too (or, at least they used to)-- and i used to drag my mom to concert after concert. for years this woman sat in a room full of people she hardly knew listening to variably tuned simpliied renditions of the war horses (mozart's eine kliene nachmusik, a little brahms, and, may God forgive us, the brandenbergs) and learned not to clap in between movements. she saved up for concert dresses we couldn't afford and i grew out of too quickly and for a long while took the whole thing very, very seriously, carting me to lessons and rehearsals and doing the crossword puzzle in the car.
which brings me to stage fright. |
| everybody has it, i figured out after years of this stuff. everbody. and you almost never talk about it until you know each other very, very well. but we all got it. and we were all different about it.
mine was always worst just before the conductor raised his baton, waiting in the wings. it was the waiting that got me. the only thing that comforted me was knowing that once we got started the fear would let go of me, the music would pick me up, and i would focus on the notes, the bowings, the dynamics, the articulation-- there were a hundred other things to think about-- and all of them would lift me out of the heart-fluttering, ball of rocks in my stomach, sweaty feeling that i wasn't ready, i just wasn't ready.
and i'm trying to remember that right now because tomorrow i'm back in the hospital with a panel of patients i've never met, never examined, all of whom need to be in the hospital for whatever reason and all of whom will need someone smart, someone ready and right now i am a ball of not ready, not ready.
there was a rabbi once, a doctor's son, who was patient enough to get on the phone one horrible, horrible call night and tell me that this is what makes what we do brave. we bring our flawed humanity knowing that it is flawed, we bring our fallability and our weakness and our imperfect memory and our irrational, unreliable brains and face off with illness and pain and suffering knowing that we risk screwing up, failing, missing something. if we were machines, if we were always right there would be no risk in it, nothing to lose. we walk in the hospital knowing that what we do in there will one day haunt us forever. i've heard those stories-- good doctors telling me about the lab results that got lost in the shuffle, about the diagnosis that was only obvious two days too late, about the six cancer cells on the slide six months ago that might not have made any difference but still...
and i also remember that the night before any performance, any performance i just couldn't sleep. |
