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Explode the Moment back by Laura H.
Auditions
The gym shone yellow. All around me I saw familiar faces, heard familiar sounds, yet everything was foreign. I forever fidgeted with the buttons on my new pink shirt; an output for my agitation. I could feel it in my hand, the smooth, sleek plastic. The keys where cold on my fingers. The clarinet shook violently as I tried to calm my nerves. I knew that it was soon to be my turn. The clock advanced slowly forward, drawing my audition nearer and nearer. I wanted to get it over with, but I didn’t want it to come. My entire body was filled with a white hot fear, such as I had ever felt before. Slowly, one-by-one, I had watched my friends stand at the sound of their names and be led down the dark hallways of this unfamiliar school. Suddenly, I was awoken from my thoughts by the sound of the loud speaker. “Laura H.,” it called. Now it was my turn.
The Final Concert
The music pumped through me, filling every fiber of my body. My foot tapped with the beat and the base line hammered at my brain. I was filled with an energy such as I could only find through music, a feeling which had never been so strong. A day and a half of practicing, drilling, and playing until my lips were numb, had all culminated in this one concert. This final song. I had never sounded so good. We had never sounded so good. My fingers moved at lightning speed on their own accord. Air pulsed through the wood, and the sound that issued forth from the clarinet joined the others in a cacophony of sound that floated over the air and hung there, smiling down on us. As the brass stood at the climax of the song, my heart soared up with them. Music is my life, my passion, and this was what it’s all about. We nailed the ending, and the final note hung over us and clung to the walls, to the chairs, to the audience, to everything. The feeling was sheer euphoria through the whole auditorium. I looked around at the faces of the other musicians, and they all said, quiet plainly, “Yes! We did it! We nailed it! YES!” |