Mediocrity and the Anticipation of Autumn

The office smelled sterile today, like an exam room in a doctor’s office. A lot of my co-workers gave blood, and returned from the vampire bus parked outside with a brightly colored bandage on their arm. Being recently tattooed, I could not join them. Some people had bandages that matched their clothes. There was something so analogous about it, in a “Stepford Wives” sort of way.

The concert band has another performance this coming Wednesday. Because of the hectic schedule, we haven’t had many rehearsals. We will be bringing at least two songs into rotation that are practically sight-reads. I am certain that there is some merit in playing a song for the first or second time in front of an audience, if you can pull it off. Otherwise, it seems like a pity-fuck of a performance. Yes, they’ll clap. Some might not care that the brass section ignored the key signature for half the song. But it’ll suck, and I’ll know it. This is why Conte invented the pencil, so musicians could mark their sharps and flats. Admittedly, I have issues following my own advice in this matter. At rehearsal I played an incorrect note so loudly, you would’ve thought I had never been more certain of anything in my life. I understand what the expression “daggers for eyes” means now, because I think I felt physical pain as a direct result of the glares from the people in my section.

There’s not many performances left for the season. This makes me happy in a way, because I prefer the music we play in the Autumn-Winter programs. I love the acoustics of the auditorium, how the music sounds as if it’s being played with an endless breath, though it is filled with many.

I'm listening to the Confutatis from Mozart's requiem (K. 626) and it's going so slowly that it's driving me mad. I actually want to push them along as I imagine Daffy Duck would, screaming "Go, go, go!!!" the entire time.