Voices

I have been asked to audition for a teacher. Somehow this audition is a huge life-changing deal. She has already decided to reject me - that is clear - and the audition is merely a formality. The trouble is that my music is not played by someone born into a wealthy enough family for her. I start. She immediately covers the keys so I cannot see what I am doing. Fine, I accept that as a teaching technique with some students, but it is a little weird at an audition. She then starts demonstrating arpeggios, <PERSON> moves, elaborate sostenuto progressions, the works. I am out of practice and intimidated. I am not about to show her the music I have written - she is a hostile force. This is right after I have been introduced to two unattractive gentlemen and asked to choose between them. "Neither" was not an accepted option, so I am now on the blacklist with this piano woman. Finally, I have had enough. I start playing <PERSON> "The Entertainer" - and not perfectly, either, but just because I like playing the song. She stops the audition and asks me to talk to an adjudicator on my way out. Before this, I am on my way to the audition room and I am walking through a huge house, very clean and spacious. I see lions and antelopes and other huge beasts materializing before my eyes - some of them being ice sculptures, yet alive. At one point I say there are lions, but my sister says, "Lions? There are no lions," and gives me a significant look as if to say, "Do not tell this lion he is a lion!" I pick up on that and say, "Of course there are no lions, because there are no predators. Lions eat people." Then I catch a hurt expression in the lion's face, and I hastily add, "Except the good lions, of course." Real-life parallels: I have been helping my 20-month-old nephew play the piano. He keeps trying to close the keyboard cover. I showed him how to sweep the keys with his palms and he is fascinated with trying to do that. My sister has repeatedly been correcting things I say in front of the child and ways I deal with the child - in a nice, toddler-friendly voice, of course.