Dawn of the Final Year... 8521 Hours Remain

I am totally aware that the world is no more likely to end at the end of the Mayan calendar than it is at the end of my 2011 wall calendar, but a friend of mine made that joke on Facebook today, so I felt like sharing.  Happy 2012, internet!  Hope you're having a good year so far, mine started kinda whatever, but has taken a few small turns for the better.

This might be a dangerous topic for me to go into, but I think I can make a good rant out of it despite Lucca's warnings, so here we go!  I played in a performance of the Messiah last week, with an interesting twist in that for the entire thing, we had less rehearsal than it takes to actually put on the piece.  It's an annual tradition where a mishmash of random people get together and kind of blitz the entire work on minimal rehearsal, and though I keep meaning to do it, this is the first year I've actually got around, as one of the organizers asked me to play The Trumpet Shall Sound.

"BeHOLD... I TELL you a MYYYYYY-STERYYYYYYYYY"

>.>

Lol, check out the trumpet in that.  I have an old Selmer 4-valve Bb/A picc, which was (and still might be, idk) the industry standard for a long time, from what I've heard.  And it went... well, much better than last time I played it, which was under much worse circumstances, on an instrument I wasn't terribly familiar with, in a hall that I have a hate-hate relationship with.  Yes, the hall hates me as much as I hate it. XD  This one was significantly better, but still not as good as if I hadn't been playing (read: taceting) the entire Messiah around it, or as if I had gotten more opportunities to practice over the madness of Christmas break.  But still, a lot of people were impressed, and a lot of people said good things (Ramona especially made me very happy when she told me how she thought it went ^.^).

And y'know what?  I'll just say it... I can't take a compliment.  Like, at all.  Here's the thing: I know that people legitimately mean them when they say them, but I can't shake this feeling that they always fall into one of these obscure categories of half-compliments:

(Please note that I'm not accusing anyone of malicious intent; I know that people can be and are very genuine with these, this is merely a by-product of both my own rather low self-esteem and lengthy history of rarely being among the best at anything ever)

1) The "Better than Me" Compliment - People who say you did amazing, though they don't have the background or level of skill to tell a pretty good show apart from a flawless one.  Like, even if I'm in the 1st percentile for getting the notes, I worry about my tone colour, I worry about my shaping.  And even if it's the best I've ever played, I know my tone's not perfect.  I know my vibrato's either nonexistant, forced, or done in a way that it shouldn't be, depending on the day.  I know it COULD have been better, and I know the person complimenting me might not realize that.

2) The "Best You've Ever Done" Compliment - This is related to the first one, but from the opposite category of people, those who are pros in the field and know what they're talking about.  When I hear "That's the best I've ever heard you play," I can't help thinking of everything that was wrong, or awkward, or doesn't sound flawless, and think "Well, that's the limit of my abilities, I can't surpass it yet."

3) - The "That Was Hard" Compliment - This one really gets on my nerve... it can be related to the above two, but it has to do with people justifying your errors by saying that what you attempted is at a very complex and challenging piece, and that for your level, you did great.  This still makes me think of it in terms of level, and that mine's not good enough.

And then, when people tell me I'm too hard on myself, I can't help thinking "Well, if I wasn't this hard on myself, I wouldn't get better, so this is actually the perfect level of self-critique!" And then everything ever goes down the drain.  Basically, post-concert, I'm a total psychological mess. XD

And that's that!  Of all the things you could take out of this, I don't want "Everything I ever say to you forever will now be negative" to be one of them, please.  I'm moreso aiming that people don't get offended when I reply semi-sarcastically or dismissively, as I tend to do that without meaning it.

So, for the future of this blog... looks like my average posting rate is settling into twice a month, so I'll set that as my quota.  The next big thing will probably be my reflections on... RECORDING! :D Since I'm doing my grad school audition DVD this month!  Hopefully it'll be fun... hopefully it'll sound passable... my nerves are off the wall on this one.  We'll see how it goes!  Until next time, True Believers!