Chapter 9: Audition Part 2

| Part 1: My Analogy | Part 2: My Reality |

Prima Ballerina

“How we treat each other is more important than who is right.”

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I was raised in a conflict-free family – not because of an absence of things we should have conflicted with each other about, but because we simply didn’t know how to handle conflict. Maybe the Book of Mormon scripture claiming that “contention is of the devil” led us to believe that it was something to be feared, or maybe we just shared enough common interests and goals to keep things smooth. In any case, it seemed like my siblings and I agreed on pretty much everything growing up – or at least we didn’t disagree strongly enough to express any dissent. Now that we disagree on something as fundamental as religion, however, we seem to be in new territory that takes me right back to the last fight I can recall in our household:

I don’t even remember exactly what we were fighting about, but I do remember being absolutely sure that I was right. No way was my kid sister going to convince me otherwise! When my mother finally intervened to prevent our bickering from escalating any further, the lecture started out like it always did:

“You’re 12, so you should know better!”

“But I’m right,” I countered, “and she’s wrong!”

Well, my backtalk got me nowhere; Mom sat us down on the couch together to try to make a more lasting point. When she started into a story about one of her university dance classes, we knew we were in it for the long haul; I don’t know why this particular story managed to stick with me over the years – no doubt there were many other lectures that I have long since forgotten – but here’s how the story went (admittedly with a bit of embellishment of my own):

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After years of grueling coursework spent mastering the theory, interpretation, and execution of a wide range of dance styles, the only thing that stood between the Class of 1965’s dance students and their degrees was a final performance course. When the students gathered for the dean’s opening lecture at the beginning of their last term, they were shocked to hear that their entire semester’s grade would be based on the final exam, which would involve the performance of a self-choreographed lead dance number. This, of course, made the students very nervous, since a failing grade would rule out graduation.

The students each put tremendous effort into preparing a final dance routine that would be sure to impress the professor by showcasing their own, unique strengths through their choreography. All of their preparations came down to this one dance, so they worked incredibly hard week after week trying to perfect their chosen solo routines.

As the semester neared an end, each student was assigned a time slot to appear backstage for their graded performance.

Exam day arrived all too soon, and the students each made their way to the recital venue – a beautiful concert hall where the top-scoring students might hope to perform as professional dancers one day. The professor took a seat in the audience with a clipboard in hand. To add to the realism of the performance, she had even arranged for a live pit orchestra. Each student showed up at their allotted time; to their surprise, however, they found that everyone had been assigned the same time slot. Amidst the growing confusion, they all took their starting positions. Without any warning, the orchestra struck up the introductory bars.

“Ready?” asked the professor from the back of the hall.

Nobody was the least bit ready.

“5, 6, 7, 8, begin!” she directed.

The students each reacted differently; the most confident of the students stepped straight into their routines. Other, less confident students slowly emerged on the stage and struggled to find their place. Still others didn’t know where to begin and just stayed frozen in their first position. Those who couldn’t cope at all tried to escape the professor’s view by running offstage. Some shook their heads at the commotion, while others simply collapsed in a heap.

Meanwhile, the professor observed their routines keenly and took detailed notes.

As the music progressed, everyone eventually got over themselves and made it out onto the dance floor. Some decided to just dance in place so they wouldn’t get in anyone’s way. Others adapted the moves they had planned to perform and worked around their classmates. A few belligerent types ran straight through their routines as if nobody else was on stage.

Some collisions resulted in apologies; others resulted in curses. A few bruises and black eyes became dreadfully apparent as the music continued. Confidence levels swung wildly back and forth as everyone wondered just how the professor was ever possibly going to be able to grade such a chaotic performance.

The closing bars of the music sounded; the professor scribbled some final notes while the students took their bows.

The following day, all of the dancers returned to receive their marks; each was handed a note with a critique and a grade.

The reaction was a mixture of gasps and tears. Some of the most talented dancers were absolutely devastated to receive a failing mark. Other dancers with lesser technical skills were surprised to receive an A, especially considering that their routines had not gone as planned.

One particularly gifted dancer began to argue that her choreography had been the most difficult of all, and that she had made no technical mistakes in performing it.

“So why did you flunk me?” she cried.

The professor didn’t respond, but rather asked all of the dancers to take a seat to hear her final oration.

“I have brought a stack of course completion certificates and commendation letters with me,” she said, “Who would like me to sign theirs?”

Every hand went up.

“My job here has been to get you ready for the real world,” she said, “and the whole design of your education has been to prepare you for this transition. Do you see what I mean?”

The students weren’t sure what she was getting at and shook their heads.

“For your performances tonight, you practiced what you had choreographed over and over again until it was embedded in your muscle memory.”

With their own muscles aching, this particular statement resonated with the students.

“But when it comes to opening night in a real performance, regardless of your level of preparation, somebody is going to get in your way. It might be a stagehand. Or the lights won’t be quite right. Or perhaps the audience will distract you. And other dancers will most certainly miss their mark at some point.”

Angry glances darted back and forth between some of the dancers who felt that their own performance had been robbed by someone who got in their way.

“Well if you storm off stage in a huff, the audience will be left with an unfortunate gap. Perhaps the glitch wasn’t your fault to begin with. But to keep the performance beautiful, your job is to roll with it and prevent any ugly exchanges.”

“But now I’ll have to stay in school,” shouted the prima donna of the group, “I was all ready to join a troupe; they won’t take me without the certificate!”

“I understand,” responded the professor, “but in my opinion, you aren’t anywhere near ready.” After a short pause, she added, “I’m sorry, but you still have a lot to learn about performing with a professional dance troupe.”

This response was met with a few sets of rolled eyes, but other dancers – particularly those with black eyes – began to nod in agreement.

“As I’m watching the overall performance from the back of the hall, I can look past some of the technical omissions but I can’t ignore a collision,” the professor said, “And the angry glances and other body language I saw from some of you would certainly leave a stain on an evening’s performance.”

A few of the failing students packed up their things and stood up to leave in protest.

“Do you seriously expect me to recommend you to prestigious theatre companies and dance troupes,” the professor said, making her way to the door in advance of her disappointed students, “when you haven’t yet learned to make any adjustments for unpredictable surprises?”

The whole point of the exercise seemed to sink in for most of the students as they lined up to exit the hall, but fearing it might have been lost on the divas, the professor offered one last summary of the lesson for their benefit:

“How you interact with the whole troupe on stage,” she said, giving each dancer a hug as they left, “is more important than whether you were right!”

“Do you get the point?”

I waited for the answer, but the story was over.

“Krey, do you get the point?” my mom asked again.

“Oh, sure,” I replied, snapping back to reality and hoping to just end the lecture already.

“Good,” she said.

“But I was still right, you know,” I said, “and I can prove it.”

My mom sighed as she realized the lesson had not actually sunk in at all for me. I proceeded into my argument once again. I wasn’t sure if it would sway her, but when I finished laying out my case, I was surprised that she actually ended up agreeing with me.

“So that’s that!” I thought and got up to leave, feeling vindicated. But before I could take a single step toward the door, my sister started to argue her point as well. And to my dismay, Mom heard her out as well…and then told her she was right, too!

“But that’s no excuse for how you were treating each other,” she said, pointing at both of us.

The point was completely lost on me, since I was still stuck on an entirely different track that had ground the gears to a halt in my brain: How could we both be right? I saw mutual exclusivity on this particular issue. It was either one or the other; we couldn’t possibly both be right! But now Mom was basically saying that it didn’t matter at all who was right. I thought of turning around and starting back into the argument, but I decided to just shrug it away for the time being and went back to playing Asteroids on the Atari.

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So that’s the parable of the prima ballerina. My mother told me that this series of events actually happened in one form or another – probably in a much less dramatic way than what I’ve described here. In any case, this analogy of mine includes a measure of reality that captures my current philosophy of life. When I first heard it, I hated the story altogether; it didn’t make any sense to me in the least! I was obsessed with my own grades at the time, and I thrived on consistency and predictability with my yet-to-be diagnosed OCD. In my junior high, the teachers reused every exam; all you had to do was ask an eighth grader and they could tell you exactly what was going to be on your next test. So this demented professor’s subjective cruelty seemed completely unfair and made me awfully scared of college. I mean, what sort of grading system is that? It’s not even remotely fair!

Over the years, though, I guess I’ve been left with a point about what really matters in life: how we treat each other is more important than who is right. This seems especially relevant now that my siblings and I find ourselves adopting what appear to be mutually exclusive religious views. But I think this story can apply to life in general and not just simply to religion; to get to the bottom of it for myself, I’d like to leave it in the form of Nathan’s allegorical question: “Who are you?”

So let’s make this one multiple choice. Are you/Am I:

The timid, fearful student who doesn’t want to get in anyone’s way;
The courteous, adaptable student who truly tries their best and allows everyone else the same privilege by helping them to shine in their own right;
The guilt-ridden, self-deprecating student who believes they’ve made such huge mistakes that they might as well just quit;
The obstinate, belligerent student who expects everyone else to either follow behind their prescribed dance routine or just get out of the freaking way;
The unaccountable, finger-pointing student who has hired a personal trainer to make all of their decisions – and to take any blame in proxy;
The zealous, paranoid student who forgets to dance at all because they’ve spent their time warning everybody else that they’re all going to fail the audition if they don’t fall in line;
The positive, joyful student who keeps right on dancing because they just plain love to dance?

Perhaps I’ve missed some other character that would be more representative, but honestly, if this story serves as an analogy for life, which character are you? And who do you wish you were? If those two questions have two different answers, there’s a problem. As for myself, I have identified an obvious gap in my own divergent answers, and the whole goal of the ramblings in this book has been to find a solution that allows me to answer both questions with the same response – being the same person I want to become!

If I look at the above list of characters, I know exactly who I want to become: I want to just enjoy the dance and do my best to help everyone else enjoy theirs – not because there’s a grade at stake, but because to me that collective “joie de vivre,” as the French call it, reflects the true measure of fulfillment. But honestly, that’s not the character I have been in the past. Given that it took me this long in life to recognize the discrepancy – I’m already facing my fifties after all – I also have to face the fact that if I don’t do something about it now, I’ll probably never be happy with the man in the mirror!

There are voices telling us to just stick to the dance routine that we have been taught. These voices will tell us that we can’t be concerned about anyone adhering to an invalid ideology. You prepared that spin, so you are obliged to execute it as you’ve practiced, and if you happen to elbow someone else in the nose during the performance, well, it was your God-given right to do as you were told. No apology needed; you can comfortably shrug your shoulders, because the professor in the back is only concerned about your adherence to the prescribed, choreographed routine.

In response to that viewpoint, I’ll quote the Cold War philosopher Dr. Sumner: “Believe me when I say to you, I don’t subscribe to this point of view | We share the same biology, regardless of ideology.”

Now I’m certainly no dancer – in fact, I’ll probably leave this world without ever having danced in front of anyone at all – so the prima ballerina might not be the most relevant example to illustrate my arrival at the crossroads I am facing today. But this same story could be told in other contexts, with the main character performing a chorus line, a tumbling routine, a martial arts kata, a haka, or any other number on a wide-ranging set of stages. As for myself, I’ve recognized parallels to the story of the dancer in pursuit of my own passions, including drum line auditions like the Top Secret example at the beginning of this chapter. Whether it’s the dancer or the drummer, though, the end answer comes out as the same advice: just enjoy the performance, try to help some people along the way, and quit worrying about your grade!

If a drum solo can be viewed as an analogy for this life, as I look at my audition tape so far, I’m afraid I’ve been so obsessed with my own routine that I put on my blinders and plowed everybody else over with my coach’s full blessing. But I hope that I am in the process of becoming the drummer who adjusts his routine as needed and respectfully allows everyone to shine with their own number – enjoying the diversity in their music while still calling out those who do as I have previously done by pushing their solo on everyone else. I may fire my coach in the end, or my coach may fire me; that’s of no consequence anymore. Because my primary goal now is to become the drummer – or rather the all-around musician – who sincerely values the interaction with other musicians, stops thinking about the notes so mechanically, and just keeps making and playing music because that’s what he loves to do – and not because of some scrutinizing professor’s gradebook!

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Footnote: What is real?

I stated at the beginning of this chapter that I would start the Top Secret analogy with a true story. It obviously descended into absurdity…which is what happened in my real life as well. I don’t know if I need to beat it to death with any further explanation, but looking at Paul Dunn and Jeffrey Holland’s tendencies to blur the lines of truth with faith-based stories, maybe I should draw a line to clearly separate fact from fiction here.

The story about the dance class is at least partly true – in any case I do remember my mother telling me a version of that story. As far as the drum auditions, the drum set in the attic is real; the Grandville High School marching band was real; and my Drummer of the Year trophy is real. [Oh, but I failed to mention that the award was more of a joke and had nothing to do with musical talent. As a non-member of the school’s music program, I merely picked up the heaviest bass drum when the real drummer got sick and bailed them out for the season…thus the trophy was just an expression of gratitude from the bona fide drummers – who all recognized that I didn’t know the first thing about percussion!]

But those experiences did spark enough of a passion in me that I wanted to keep it up in college too. The BYU marching band had a history of accompanying the football team to the Holiday Bowl in Sunny San Diego, which sounded like a lot of fun. I happened to be overseas finishing up my missionary service during the BYU Marching Band’s drum line auditions, so I had to send in an audio tape. I bought some drumsticks from a local music store in the small, German town of Neubrandenburg where I was stationed, took out my missionary guide, and spent an entire P-Day beating it into submission as a practice pad while recording it with my Walkman. I sent in the tape and was pleased to receive an acceptance letter into the drum line a few weeks later.

When I arrived at band camp, though, the instructor quickly realized that I couldn’t actually read percussion music and could only play by copying what someone else played first. So I was demoted to holding the cymbal for the actual star of the show, the center snare. When the football team qualified for the Aloha Bowl in Hawaii instead of the Holiday Bowl, we all cheered, and I thought my servitude was going to pay off; but when the band director announced that they couldn’t justify the cost of sending along the marching band, I let the Mormon swears fly:

“Flippin’ fetchers stinkin’ son of a bishop dangit to heck!” …and thus ended my collegiate music career!

In the end, I never actually had any hope of making it into Top Secret or even to the lowliest timpani or triangle position on their squad; but I still loved drumming! While delivering pizza as a part-time job a few years later, I decided I’d rather be drumming, so I popped my instructional percussion tapes into my Jeep’s cassette deck and played the steering wheel with my drumsticks while steering with my knees during deliveries (don’t try this at home!) Eventually I learned each of the drills well enough to set up a home music school business, quit my delivery job, buy the mesh head drum kit I had been coveting, and teach the rudiments to a string of music students – all of whom ended up as better drummers than me! I ended up joining a local band, and I found that I enjoyed jamming in rehearsals as much as the performances. Maybe my kids will have more discipline and take it further one day, but as for me, nowadays I simply enjoy music without turning it into a competition or a business model.

So every bit of the story after the first mention of Top Secret is allegorical – made up! But I bring up the real, preceding experiences to illustrate how a phony poser can still have a real love and passion for music. I’ve felt the warm fuzzies that come from unity and harmony and marching in step, in both secular and spiritual settings, and I can’t seem to be able to distinguish between the two. I’ve stood on the 50-yard line (albeit backwards…); I’ve sung solos in choirs; in other settings, I’ve fought it out on the wrestling mat with a thousand eyes watching; and I’ve found myself in plenty of other positions where I had to decide whether to listen to my coach on the sidelines or do things my own way. The pressure of uniform conformity is real, as is the apparent peace that accompanies it. The fear of ignoring direct orders is real, as is the real peace that accompanies overcoming that fear. The fallacy in this case lies in the notion that the initial fear of the unknown has anything at all to do with foreboding forces of darkness. In my case, that turned out merely to be temporary uncertainty!

Each piece of the Top Secret story represents a phase of my life within Mormonism leading up to that choice on the 50-yard line. The four audition stages that are now behind me are 1) primary, 2) youth, 3) mission, and 4) parenthood in the LDS Church. As far as the time-out in Stage 5, I guess that’s whatever you call this thing I’m going through right now: My mid-audition crisis. The individual elements in the story can mean different things to different people: The shipping container could be the MTC, BYU, the temple, a chapel, a classroom, a youth conference, EFY, FSY, or any other setting where someone feels strength in the unity offered by the church or any other institution. Tommy could be a teacher, a parent, a youth leader, a bishop, the prophet who could wiggle his ears, or anyone else whose position, experience, or qualifications have put them in a leadership role for you.

Any of the details can really be taken to mean whatever you’d like; for me, each element refers back to the experiences that are outlined in the preceding chapters: Chapter 1 is the broken headset, Chapter 2 is the glee club, Chapter 3 is the jazz ensemble, Chapter 4 is the voice in the container, Chapter 5 is the belligerent recruit, Chapter 6 is the fake stamp, Chapter 7 is the fake cheers, Chapter 8 is the time-out; and everything that follows here is what happens following the commencement of game time after the time-out.

Now I’m teetering on that crucial, crunch-time brink, but I’ve left this story entirely open-ended. Where do I go from here? After spending way too much time building these hypothetical examples in my head, I ought to be able to figure out my next step by now. I’ll put together one last analogy in the final chapter to take it through the ultimate decision: Do I stay on board or jump ship?

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| Next: Chapter 10: Tempestuous |