Recital

Bunch has a musical soul. She's not a virtuoso or anything, but so far she has played around on piano, recorder, harmonica, guitar and viola, and she also started singing about age 2. She was such a darling little songbird, singing her way through every day.

We were fairly belated in starting her with any kind of music lessons, which I feel kind of bad about. So far she's only had 15 months of piano instruction, but she seems to have a knack for sight reading. She has taught me things I didn't know about the language of music.

This past Sunday she had her 2nd piano recital. Last year she played two numbers and just nailed them both. If it had been gymnastics, she'd have scored a perfect 10.

This year she was also playing two numbers, which she had down solid. She'd played them a hundred times without a hitch. She was ready.

The moment arrived, she sat down at the piano, and started playing beautifully. She was about half way through the piece when all the sudden, out of the blue, she seemed to draw a complete blank. It wasn't a tricky part, and she'd never struggled with it before, but her mind was simply at a loss. She re-attempted it a couple times, looked up, almost confused and surprised at the situation. Her teacher came to her side, got her the sheet music, and she found her place in the song and played it through to the end.

This was akin to falling off the bars or balance beam in a gymnastics meet. Not that anyone was scoring her, mind you. But a moment like that can really throw the rest of your routine. Amazingly, Bunch quickly found some core of resolve within herself, and pulled it together. She finished the first song and then played her second number, which is a much more involved piece, without the music and she did a good job. I was so happy for her because it takes a lot to recover from something like that (even though she was understandably frustrated with herself at not nailing it.)

As we drove home afterwards and she wondered why that had happened, my mind went back to 17 years ago, when Doc and I went bungee jumping for our first anniversary. I had been excited about it right up till the moment of truth, when I stood at the precipice, and suddenly everything in me kind of froze. The survival instinct kicked in full-force, and I was having a hard time turning it off so that I could step off the fifteen-story tower into the air.

To stall, I asked the attendant at the top about other jumpers. "Are there people who don't have a problem with this?" He replied "Yeah, really little kids jumping for the first time. They don't have any fear because it's out of their realm of experience."

I explained to Bunch that when she was younger, she had no fear of performing for others. She stood before crowds and sang in her sweet, little voice without qualms. It was enough to melt hearts, truly. Then after a few years, she started to grow self-conscious...a natural part of growing up. Last year was her first recital, and she didn't have any basis of comparison. This year she let herself get a bit caught up with nerves. It happens to everyone.

Finding the confidence to just carry on and block everything except the task at hand from your mind is part of the natural process everyone in the public eye must go through. I explained that she'll come full-circle soon, and speaking, singing or performing in front of people won't be so nerve-wracking with time.

She's well on her way, too. Bunch is a hard worker, and we all are the beneficiaries of her efforts.

Here she is playing her second piece: Sarabnde by George Frideric Handel.