Everyone is aware that Legacy’s Wind Symphony traveled to Indianapolis to perform at a concert festival, but what people don’t know is that the performance was catastrophic for one particular timpani player. That timpani player just so happens to be me.
First off, let me start by saying that one of the pieces the Wind Symphony played, Music from Prague 1968, contains one of the most iconic timpani, giant copper, tuned drums solos in musical literature. The four movement composition revolves around the invasion of Prague by the Soviets in 1968. The song represents the invasion as well as the Czechs’ hope. Karel Husa, the composer, won a Nobel Peace Prize for its creation. Near the conclusion of the piece, majority of the band lays out and then a timpani player, accompanied by a piccolo player, plays a slow, drawn out, emotional solo that represents the rising hope of the people of Prague. I didn’t sound very much like hope on stage. The eternal nerves, assisted by an ill-timed page turn, led me off track and I not only played the wrong note, but I played the wrong note on the wrong beat. That’s not all. Due to my extreme confusion, I left out the next measure of music entirely.
Imagine Leonardo de Vinci’s frustration if he butchered the Mona Lisa when he was just a few paint strokes from completing it. That’s about how I felt. I wanted to bawl on stage, but I held on and dealt with it. Everyone was excited about the performance and how well they performed, but I felt as if I had let the entire band down. The rest of the day remains a long, melancholy blur. When we returned to the JW Marriot that night I heard about the disappearance of Stephen Colbert. The news quickly took my mind off my lackluster performance. My heart sunk. Colbert, upon being found, told police that he had missed the bus back to the hotel and began walking down the street. A woman spotted him and offered him a ride. He remembers getting in the car, and then “waking up” to walking down the street. He was then spotted by someone who recognized him from the news reports and contacted authorities. He wound up over 20 miles away in Mooresville, Indiana. Colbert isn’t in our band, but as a band member at the same competition, he might as well have been. Bands typically share an unspoken camaraderie when brought together, and the disappearance of a fellow band kid felt like losing a member of Legacy’s band. Either way, the last thing I was thinking about was screwing up.
The trip continued and I began to completely forget about my mishap. By the time we got to Chicago for the rest of our trip, I had almost no recollection of screwing up. However, I was abruptly reminded when we listened to the recording on the bus ride home.
The point I’m trying to make is that failure is almost insignificant in the grand scheme of life. I screwed up one of the most iconic timpani solos in existence, on a national stage, in front of other band members from across the country, and yet what I felt was nothing compared to what Stephen or his family experienced. Simply speaking, no matter what you’re going through, no matter the circumstances, someone has it worse out there, and I believe that you can make it through whatever that may be.
