I’ve always loved swing dancing. Something about trusting someone so much that you’d let them throw you in the air in time with music is fascinating to me. The vintage outfits, the big band music, and the seamless partnership was something I’ve always wanted to find in another activity.
However, I will admit, I still need to find a good partner first.
The beauty of swing dancing is that even when you stop, the momentum you’re holding pushes you to the next pose. The centripetal force is so strong, so encapsulating that you are taken to the beauty of each moment. To everyone else in the room, you’re flying through time. To you and the person you’re with, you are gently held in a series of photographs, each one letting you savor the place you’re heading to.
As much as I love the art form, I’ve never done it. I’ve watched. I loved watching how amazingly calm and intricate it can be. I love the giant and predictable scenes in movies; boy sees girl, girl sees boy, boy and girl get shoved into a slightly awkward yet well meaning dance due to peer pressure, and they realize they are somehow utterly perfect without any practice or communication. They are the things they’ve been looking forward to and hoping for in a partner. A dance partner, that is. The swing dancing scene in A League of Their Own really set me up for future disappointment, huh?
I do love the idea of finding that person, almost as much as I love the idea of being thrown into the air while wearing a giant skirt. But life isn’t a film. As much as I try to direct my path to something grand and theatrical, it feels like I’m learning the lines of an extra in my own life. I don’t feel like a main character. I don’t even feel like a main character when I’m the only one to focus on in my life. Someone somewhere is continuing faster and better than I am, and I cannot do anything to try and catch up.
The strangest thing is that I never wanted to play catch up. For a long time, I was content doing what I could. I thought, if something was truly meant to me, not only would I be ready, but the universe would be too. I don’t necessarily believe in a god, but I think that the intricacies of this world are too organized to be merely coincidental. Maybe it’s due to me losing so many people while I was so young, maybe it’s because I’m still a little scared of what comes after.
Now, I live in a perpetual state of not being at the right place. Stuck inside? I should be at college. 20 views? Should be 20 million. 1 song? Should be a world tour. I’m living so slowly, and sometimes the ache of pushing against time means I have to stop. I stop for so long and get so sad that none of the work (for school or myself) even really matters.
I recently completely and totally failed my music audition for Boise State. I know that many of you will jump on this statement: “You couldn’t have done that badly!” “You’re being hard on yourself!” “You don’t know what the professors are thinking!” But, I was the one to cry the moment I ended a Zoom call. I think I have a far better idea of how well or terribly it went based on that. I’m not talking about a little stressed sob, I’m talking a fully blown meltdown. I haven’t cried like that since watching Infinity War in theaters. In all seriousness, I did cry, and I had a very taxing panic attack.
The audition wasn’t anything that was supposed to be hard. It wasn’t anything that I shouldn’t have been able to do. I was supposed to listen to notes on a piano, sing them back. I was supposed to sight read pitches, sing them back. I was supposed to read rhythms and prove to the panel that I could in fact be molded into a better musician.
I didn’t actually do any of that. I just tried and failed. All in a Zoom call. All in the matter of 10 minutes.
I couldn’t find the pitch. I couldn’t read the notes. I couldn’t keep the time. But I’ve been doing this for 8 years, believe it or not.
It was as if this was my first time in my first rehearsal. Like a cold, scared animal, I had the choice. Fight. Flee. Freeze.
I can still feel how cold I made myself into order to make sure I didn’t feel the embarrassment after. I froze.
The last time I actually cried because of an audition was when I was 10. Almost half my age. It was the first time I sang in front of people who weren’t my family, and I thought that if I didn’t get into this group with this solo I prepared, I simply would never be a singer at all. The audition was for a middle school choir group that I had been allowed to join because I was one of the few kids from an elementary school who swore an oath to join in the cult of mixed choir.
I remember what fear sounds like when it hits piano strings. Like wires of destruction and misplaced hope. The song was a 10 minute medley of pop songs from the last 40 decades- everything from the Bee Gees, to Jackson, to Hairspray, to Lady Gaga.
As a future member of the LGBTQ+ community, I had a very deep love for Lady Gaga. The glitter, the dances, the lyrics- all of it set to the idealized synth pop beat I had heard since I was born. It was Lady Gaga’s Edge of Glory. A true anthem.
I sang in the shower, the car, the classroom, anywhere where someone didn’t tell me to shut up. Every word and beat was mine. Gaga was going to be so proud of her littlest monster, and I was going to be putting down this performance in my autobiography when I headlined Madison Square Garden.
When fear hits piano string, every note is one step sharp. Barely too high. Piercing. Just uncomfortable enough to know that something wasn’t going to change enough to make it right. Long story short, I didn’t make it. Longer story short, I cried in my mom’s front seat for 20 minutes. That solo was the only thing that could propel me to stardom, and Miss Gaga herself would be highly disappointed.
Obviously, a solo at age 10 was not the make or break of my career, and we all know that. However, failing a college audition might. I don’t know yet.
I’ve accepted the fact that there is no way in hell that I’m getting in. That’s okay. At least, I’m telling myself that it’s okay.
It just means that I have to do it on my own. Whatever. :) I've done things on my own, and I'll do it again. I'd like to have a partner going forward. Someone who maybe doesn't have to actually pick me up and dance with me, but someone who wouldn't care about looking a little foolish and helping me to use my momentum to keep things going.
I'm just looking to get back into the swing of things.
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