I was asked the other day how I was going to move forward after what was a gut-wrenching rejection from the Navy Band for a live audition. I said I was compartmentalizing my feelings – put the rejection out of my mind and focus on what was coming next. The person I was speaking with challenged me to own the emotions, and this almost-abandoned blog came up.
So here we are.
It’s been a challenging month. I have been working on various audition excerpts for the better part of the summer in the hopes that I would be ready if and when auditions opened up. I am finally within a year of my contract and able to take auditions (don’t get me started on how Big Navy shut down conditional releases).
The first one up was the Navy Band. Well actually it was the Army Band, but then they postponed, and so it became the Navy Band. I got to submit recordings for both the clarinet and bass clarinet spots in the Army Band, but just after the deadline, they decided to postpone. I was okay with that, but then I got the email about the bass clarinet spot, saying that they had invited a few people to the finals that were postponed until February, and while my tape wasn’t going to get me a spot, they encouraged me to take the opportunity to re-record and submit a new tape for the later date.
Okay. Fine. Hire a recording engineer in Seattle.
So I did. Navy Band wanted a full run, no separate tracks, no editing except to trim time at the beginning. That’s it. I couldn’t lay down the Dahl. I got close.
Then my teacher from undergrad passed away. He had a number of successful students, teachers and orchestral musicians, and I guess in the interest of laying out full disclosure, I have a hard time seeing myself as one of them. I wanted to play in an orchestra, and I play in a fleet band. Or really, these days, I run pay and personnel administration and practice. I mean, this is full disclosure, right?
To me, it was like the end of an era. I regretted not staying in touch. I also regretted not ever winning an audition and being able to say, hey look, I finally did it.
So I contacted the recording engineer again, went out to Seattle again, and laid down a better recording. And it wasn’t good enough.
I can keep my shit together pretty well when I need to, but somehow the message got to us through our bandmasters. I had just gotten out of a reed quintet rehearsal, which I find fun and infuriating because I barely have enough brain cells left with as long as it’s been since I played in a group to sight read worth a damn. I felt like I was just surviving, and my boss called me into his office and let me know, kindly enough, that because they were only calling a very limited pool to stay safe with the coronavirus, they were unable to invite me to the audition.
I think that’s the first time I spontaneously burst into tears in front of any of my superiors. And then I just walked out.
And went back to Admin, where my Admin Chief and my assistant were both just like, wtf just happened, and I compartmentalized and put my game face on and got back to work prepping for our incoming Sailor.
I’m really crushed, guys. I don’t know if I get another shot after that. I’ve been in for almost 10 years now, and I either reenlist next year or I get out, and that’s scary. And if I reenlist, it’ll be for 4, so really there’s no point in auditioning, I’ll just go for retirement. Maybe I’m being overdramatic, but it’s a little like I hit a point where every rejection is like watching a dream die off one by one.
And then there are the uplifting things people say, which are kind and meant to give me hope, but fuel my doubt. I’ve heard so many people talk about how they were on their last audition, they were going to be done, but that was the audition they won. That makes me wonder how many more people took their last audition and didn’t win. What happened to those people? Am I going to be one of them?
Or the notion that hard work trumps all? If I don’t win one of these auditions, does that mean I didn’t work hard enough? Is that all there is to it?
Or that if you don’t have the baseline skills, you can’t get the job? I hear those things, and I have moments where I think, okay work to get those skills, and then I pause and I want to scream, but I DO have those skills! Why can’t I lay it down when it counts? Am I deluding myself? Am I wrong?
Or when I’m talking about taking auditions, and people are like, yeah it’s like this for the first round, but then I get to the second or the semis and it’s like this, and I don’t want to participate in the conversation because I’m somewhere between 25-30 auditions and have never made it past the first round. That’s so embarrassing. I remember a teacher commenting that if you didn’t make it by the time you were 30, you weren’t going to. I didn’t. I also remember a teacher saying that if I wasn’t already making it past the first round, I’m not going to. That seems to have held up. So why am I trying? Sometimes people talk to me like I’ve never taken an audition before and it’s like no, I am well-versed in rejection.
I’m not going to end this post with a pep talk because that’s not where I’m at right now. I wanted a job where I got to sit down and play concerts – I’m not even genre snobby (except that I am terrible at jazz – I just can’t feel it), I just want to play. But I’m in a weird wormhole where between PCSing, maternity leave, postpartum restrictions, and COVID, I haven’t done much musically in a very long time, and I’m terrified that I won’t win any of these auditions, I’ll fail myself, I’ll fail my training, I’ll fail my teachers, and I’ll be stuck pushing papers as a spare clarinet for the next 10 years.
So here we are.
Sweet Vibrations 