The Reluctant Receptionist

every year i seem to write a post about audition season and how heinous it is. it’s not just me writing these posts, either: it’s all my singer friends who have blogs. and those who don’t have blogs send me emails about it. and those that don’t have email send me smoke signals. and those that don’t have smoke signals are too poor and i pretend i don’t know them. but seriously, folks, audition season fucking sucks more than…what does it suck more than? i can’t say hurricane katrina (too soon?) or 9/11 (too soon?), because obviously audition season can’t compare with national, world politics-changing disasters. hmm. audition season sucks worse than having your wallet stolen. it sucks worse than having the laundromat turn all your clothes pink (although i did that myself perfectly fine a few weeks ago) or accidentally giving all of your clothes away to a stranger and then giving you her 44 DDD bras in return. audition season sucks.

it’s not really audition season that sucks. the auditions are the part about the whole ordeal that’s not so bad. if we take the advice of all our coaches and teachers, we should treat auditions as “performance opportunities.” i’m still working on that; i’m hoping that maybe it’ll stop me from shaking in my boots/fucking up as much. i should probably just get some beta blockers, though, so i can truly enjoy the “performance opportunities.” what sucks is getting the audition. it’s the forms and deadlines and 8×10 black and white glossies and 8×10 color mattes and resumes and do-not-refer-to-resumes and three signed sealed recommendation letters that will never actually be read.

this morning in the shower, at exactly 8:05 a.m., i remembered that the application was due for the des moines young artist program today. i got waitlisted at d.m. last season, so i kind of wanted to sing for them again. you know, hedging my bets. plus the application was cheap, comparatively: $20, as opposed to the $75 i’m not paying to not sing for music academy of the west. i had everything i needed, miraculously, except for one very important thing: the recommendation letter. of course i didn’t have ira write one—why on earth would i have thought that far ahead?—but i had one he wrote last year. and the application specifies it has to be written within the last two years. where is it? no idea. like, seriously no idea. i thought i knew and then it wasn’t there. so i tore our apartment apart, to no avail, cursing my procrastination and disorganization.

i got to work and texted phong, who, of course, knew exactly where it was. in a place i never even considered looking: in a bag in our bedroom closet. the bottom of the bedroom closet. of course! why didn’t i think of that?

and so there will be no des moines for me this year. the stars aligned and decided that i would be at this desk today, instead of calling phong from home, finding out where the rec was, and leisurely getting it to the post office. you win some, you lose some in this world of young singerdom. and this audition i lost.