When perfection took center stage, I forgot how to have fun
The hazards of constantly performing
Me last night, having fun!
In the recital hall I played in at the end of every semester, grey carpets reflected my mood back at me as I tried to calm my turning stomach. At 14, I had been playing in front of other people since my first recital, when I had given a rousing rendition of Jolly Old St. Nicholas. At 8, I hadn’t known to be terrified of messing up, and I was still too far ahead of the curve to think I could.
Jolly Old. St. Nicholas was easy, I bragged. Could I do something harder?
6 years later, I had submitted to the metronome I had once thrown across a room and to the reality that to hold on to the instrument I had loved since I was a child, I would have to memorize pages and pages of music.
That’s what I was in the middle of doing when I gave this recital. Against the backdrop of the lesser-known Beethoven piece I was about to play, I was learning Debussy’s First Arabesque.
It would go on to become one of my favorite pieces of music after I successfully performed it in an audition to get into the performing arts high school in my hometown. But that period of my life lay ahead of me as I stood up, shaky in the knees, to play this Beethoven piece that I absolutely hated.
My teacher said it was good for me to learn, and I trusted her. More importantly, I wanted to prove I could. Piano was always a competition for me, with myself more than with anyone else. I could read music so well and had no patience for anything else unless I was forced to acknowledge its existence, be it rhythm(of which mine is questionable) or actually learning how to play a phrase.
I could have reinvented the entire repertoire of music in my own style, but as many of you probably know, the classical piano wasn’t designed as a creative trade- it was designed for perfection.
So I strove for perfection. As my teacher sat next to me in that recital hall, whispering what chords came next to shock my memory back to life, I had never felt further from perfection- or more ashamed. It turns out Beethoven didn’t leave a lot of room for error- nor was I discreet about my liberties with his piece.
Performance anxiety and I met many more times over the years, in the form of not getting the grade I wanted in competitions to completely bombing assessments for piano class(performing arts high school stuff)to choking(metaphorically) during concerts and having people claim they didn’t notice a thing, even though I knew nothing could hide the pregnant pause or a need to start a piece from the top again.
I loved playing the piano. It was never forced on me. I started playing for recitals so early, my love of perfection in piano and my love of just playing became inseparable. I grew to love perfection and forgot how to love playing.
This wasn’t just in piano. It was in life. I loved getting perfect grades and was crushed when I didn’t, which mean I was crushed a lot. This was in relationships. Only recently have I begun to separate what feels good to me from what I feel like I should do as a dutiful girlfriend. So many of my relationships were predicated on the word should. My love of academic perfection sent me to therapy my freshman year of college, but by then, the roots of other people’s standards were far deeper than dear Steven, the intern who saw me briefly, could have addressed.
Even today, my selling point to clients is how good- no, amazing, no perfect!- their experience with me will be. I wonder if I’m not misleading them. Of course, I work hard for my clients, but I’m only human.
The reality is, life is a performance. We all present ourselves a certain way to certain people. What kind of performance do we want this to be? Improv, or something that is already written out for us?
Last night, I performed in my first Lyra(aerial hoop) showcase. I’ve been learning Lyra for a little over a year. I love it. Last night, I performed just for me.
Love this post because it’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, especially as my kids try new sports and activities.
The point of life is to live it, try all the things and experience it. Not to perfect it.
Great piece, Camille, and congrats on your performance last night! Like Rebecca, it makes me pause to reflect on my own need for perfection. 💛