epiphany needed

When I was a kid, I used to do piano competitions. I don't really know why. My piano teacher, Mr Element, thought it would be a good idea. I would do this thing every year: We would drive out to St Catherine's or Detroit to a hotel and dress up a bit and wait all day for our half-an-hour time slots.

In retrospect, it was kind of funny. There'd be regulars. Some kids that I wouldn't talk to because I'm shy, but I'd recognize because they were snobbish or super friendly or had annoying parents.

Anyway, I'd do really really bad. I would go up and be so nervous that I'd forget how to play the song I'd been practising for months. I'd forget what the first chord was. So I'd try some out in front of everyone, and they'd be wrong. I'd start to cry and the adjucator would feel sorry for me and let me see the music, and then I'd get started and be fine. Or I would play the whole song with the wrong pedal. It wasn't really fun for me. I'd cry a lot from those competitions.

One year, things were different. I resigned to the fact that I was probably going to screw up, that it was very likely that I'd make a huge and horrible mistake, and that I'd go back to the car and cry a little bit and that was it. It sounds like a pretty depressing admission, but it was actually kinda freeing. That year, I won first place in that competition.

I think I need a similar revelation for singing. After Monday's awesome Shakespeare, on Tuesday I did a really bad job on It's a Perfect Relationship from Bells Are Ringing. And it's not like I forgot the words, but I couldn't do so well because I was nervous. Marie Baron, my teacher, totally intimidates me. She's starred at Stratford and been on Broadway, and she really knows what she's talking about. She is very classy and controlled in her mannerisms: she shows very little that she doesn't want to. Anyway, after performing she told me (in her extremely sweet voice) to say, "Fuck it. I'm going to do badly." And I said it with as good articulation as I could, but I wasn't in a place to understand it.

I need an epiphany, and I know exactly what it has to be. (Marie Baron told me.)