The Audition 
 
 

I pushed my foot down on the gas pedal and sped up to the 65 miles per hour needed to enter the highway. I had just gotten my permit and hadn’t been on the highway very many times.

      “Now, it’s rush hour so you don’t really need that much speed,” said my dad who was sitting next to me, guiding me.

      As I neared the end of the entrance ramp, I saw I long stream of cars bumper to bumper and I began to slow down.

      “Okay. So how this is gonna’ work is that merging cars move onto the highway every other car. See, there he’s letting you in. Go.”

      I merged in to the line of middle aged, white-collar workers commuting back to their homes in Orinda and Lafayette and wondered how the hell anybody could do this everyday.

      “Jesus! I’d kill myself before doing this everyday!”  Said my dad, as if he had read my mind.

      The sun began to set as we went through the Calcutta Tunnel and moved past Orinda. We were on our way to my bi-weekly drum lesson in Lafayette and the trip was an hour in each direction. As I got some speed, the road seemed to swing and sway beneath the car, the tires caressing the pavement in a smooth, passionate way. I made beats in my head to the rhythm of the tires moving across the lines engraved in the pavement of the highway, and the sound of the air rushing over the car made a background noise that allowed me to improv and solo over the beat. I was in power and it was great.

      “WHOA! WHOA! WHOA!”

      I looked ahead and realized that traffic had stopped and I was speeding straight towards it. I slammed on my brakes, just in time to come to an abrupt but rather smooth stop.

      “WHAT WAS THAT?” screamed Dale, “You always have to pay attention, Nico! You can’t let your mind wander too much”.

“Sorry, Dale, sorry. I would’ve caught it, I just, I don’t know”.

      “That’s alright, just keep your eyes on the road.”

      The traffic began to move ahead and I followed. My feeling of power had changed to a feeling of doubt.  I realized that although I was fully aware of my surroundings and my actions I had to be even more aware because I wasn’t just driving, I was hurling a huge metal object on cement at 70 miles per hour.

***

      John welcomed us in as we walked through his door. I stepped in and sat on one of the chairs to the right of the door as he and Dale swapped a few quick words.

      “Hey, how are you guys?” John asked.

      “Good,” I said.

      “Rollin’ along singin’ a song,” said my dad. This was one of the phrases he often used to describe how his day was going.

      I let my mind wander for a minute as they talked and I prepared myself for the lesson.

      “Alrighty then, see ya’ in a few,” said Dale ask he walked out the door, leaving us to start the lesson.

      Dale left and my lesson began.

      “Alright, so the audition’s tomorrow right?” asked John.

      “Yeah, we should probably work on sight-reading the whole lesson because I know I’m gonna blow shit for the audition,” I said.

      “Yeah, we’ll do that. But man, you’ve been working on that all summer! There’s no way you’ll mess it up. You just gotta be confident. ‘Cause in my opinion, unless there’s a total killer prodigy of a drummer, you’re gonna make the ensemble.”

      “ I hope so,” I said, dreading the next day.

      “Alright then, let’s get to it.”

      The lesson went well. We practiced my sight-reading by having me play while listening to a song through headphones and reading the chart of the song. I felt more confident than ever after the lesson that this year I was finally going to make the ensemble. I felt ready and like I could do the job. I needed to be in a more challenging band so that I could improve my jazz skills faster.

      I let Dale drive home so that I could keep my mind on drumming and not almost crash into stopped traffic again. Even though it wasn’t jazz, we listened to Nirvana Unplugged Live in New York on the way home to get me even more into the musical spirit of life. Kurt Cobain, Dave Grohl, and Nirvana had inspired me to become a musician when I was only three years old, so listening to them always got me into the mood and set my mind straight.

      I went to sleep feeling confident, yet still dreading the next day. I knew that I would get nervous and screw something up. I always did.

      ***

      The next day I had some time to practice during my free sixth period and tried to warm-up. But after months of practicing and preparing for the audition I still felt nowhere near ready.

      The bell rang signaling that seventh period was beginning. The auditioner split us into groups based on our instruments and the auditions began. He took about ten minutes per person and there were about twelve people lined up before the drummers even began. This meant I had plenty of time to realize just exactly how miserable I was and ponder the many painful ways of killing my self, just to get the audition experience over with. I tried to stay optimistic and thought about how long and hard I had practiced for this day and how I was ready and was going to get into the ensemble. But my attempt at being optimistic soon turned into a dark pessimism as I began to realize how horrible I was at playing the drums and that a quadruple-amputee could probably play better than me. I then convinced myself that there was no way in hell that I was going to get into the ensemble.

      The auditioner finally beckoned for the drummers and I went in. First, he tested us on reading. One by one he called a student up to clap a rhythm written on a page in front of the whole group. As I watched the people who went before me I felt my optimism coming back. They were just eighth notes and sixteenth notes, simple phrases that I felt confident that I could play. That is until it was my turn.

      As I got up to walk forward, I felt my lungs collapse. It seemed as though I could no longer breath, and I was gasping for air like a fish out of water. I began to shake nervously, and as I walked forward and everything seemed to change. My senses magnified everything. My eyes widened, my hearing became better, and I appeared to step out of my body and look around. Everything distracted me: the lights, the creaking of the chairs, and his goddamn cologne, as if it weren’t overpowering already, my heightened senses made it feel as though I had just been hit by a train, knocking me off my feet and grinding me into the ground until there was nothing left.

      “Take a look at this one,” he said.

      I looked at it and noticed that the copy was extremely faded and some parts were very hard to comprehend. But there was nothing I could do.

      “Ready?” He asked.  

      “Yes.”

      “Okay then, 1…2…3…4”

      CLAP…CLAP…CLAP-CLAP…shit. I was too nervous…I was screwing up.

      “Sorry,” I said.

      “Okay, try it again. 1…2…3…4”

      CLAP…CLAPITY…shit.

      “All right and this one,” he said.

      He had moved on. I had failed the first out of three and he left it behind. I then proceeded to fuck up the second one as well, but managed to complete the third one perfectly.

      “You nailed that one,” he said, “but it was way harder than the others.”

      “Yeah, I just needed to calm down,” I said, “ I was too nervous”.

      “Well you don’t get a pass for being nervous. A drummers job is to maintain composure.”

      “Thanks a lot,” I thought. I had done miserably on the reading even though it was easy and this only made me more psyched-out. The next section was on the drum set. I did well on the first part but on the second part I forgot how to play a “Five Stroke Roll”, a pattern played with both hands that alternated between hands: RLRR LRLL, which lead to more psyching out and caused me to not do as well as I should have. Later in the audition I remembered what a Five Stroke Roll was and told him.

      “It’s too late for that,” he replied.

      I left the audition feeling as though I had just undergone surgery. I decided that the most beneficial thing for me would probably be to go burry my head at the beach during low tide and wait for the water to come back up. I thought of other ways to alleviate my misery as I walked home and then realized that I still had homework to do.

***

      The bell rang at the end of fifth period the next day and I practically jumped out of my desk. I moved swiftly out the door of my math class, down the three flights of stairs to the first floor and into the courtyard. The courtyard was like a stampede of students moving from class to class and was almost impossible to go through it. As I finally reached the other side of the courtyard, the crowd began to thin, allowing me to finally get into the music building.  

      I walked up the stairs into the hallway of the building and over to the music teacher, Mr. Hamilton’s, office. The audition results were posted on his window. I took a deep breath and approached the posted results. It took my eyes a few seconds to scan the multitude of pages and find the drummers. There they were:

      1^st Drummer: David McFarlen

      2^nd Drummer: Evan Hughes

      My heart sank as I searched frantically for a third drummer position but I could find nothing of the sort. I stepped away from the postings and slowly made my way down the stairs and back into the courtyard. The fresh air was a relief.

      “Did you make it?” asked Nick, the bass player from the Lab Band as he walked to check the results.

      I shook my head and he nodded as I walked away.

      On my way up to the YMCA, I began to notice that I didn’t really care. It was kind of shocking that after all that time practicing for that audition; it really didn’t bother me that I hadn’t made the ensemble. Deep down did I really not want to be in the ensemble?

      It then occurred to me that although I really wanted to be in the Ensemble as a means to improve my drumming and gain more experience playing with other people, the whole audition process and competitive nature of the program had made me less enthusiastic about getting in.

      I walked away from that audition experience with a new perspective toward my musical future. It made me rethink the direction I wanted to head in as far as style and how I wanted to pursue it. I realized that playing Rock n’ Roll was my strong suit and that playing certain styles of Jazz was also really fun, but might not be my main focus. After that audition, I was able to look deeper into my musical self and pull out what I really wanted to do, in music and in life.