Dec. 12th, 2008. Dedicated to everyone who's been auditioning like mad lately.

This note is dedicated to anyone and everyone who shows up for an audition.

So, I don't know if everyone knows this or not, but this is the first year that I have consistently shown up for every single audition that I applied for. Today's audition was number 57. That's right. 57. I'm not exaggerating. I have 6 more auditions before Christmas. I'm starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel. I don't know if it's because I know that I've been cast in a couple of things - I tend to think that it's more because I've figured something out.

Before I get to the thing I figured out, though, I need to rant just a little bit. Feel free to rant in your comments, I just need to get this out of my system.

Just who the hell is ANYBODY to decide what is art and what is not? What we do, as singers, actors, instrumentalists, in the audition process, is to get up in front of a select few people and make art. Private art. Just for them. Just for a few minutes. And they get to sit there all day long, witnessing art being made. I sometimes find myself wondering if they can appreciate how awesome their jobs are. I've been blessed with a few auditions this year where the adjudicators acknowledge how lucky they are - these instances have brought me to tears. And then there are the other kinds of auditions....the ones where the adjudicators talk loudly over the music, scribble away furiously, stop you one measure before the end of your piece, make comments about how much they have a distaste for the contemporary music you offer....

So, again, just who is ANYBODY to say what is art and what is not? I mean, I MAKE art for a living and I'm not someone who can gauge this question. I honestly think my cats are just as qualified as the people I sing for.

So here's where we get to the part where I figured out a solution to the audition funk that works for me.

Oddly enough, this thought came to me as I was reading Charles Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities." What I am about to quote isn't the happiest thing you've ever read, but it's somehow comforting to read just before I get up to sing for an audition, and I'll explain why once I finish quoting this amazing Dickens passage:

" A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this. No more can I turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and vainly hope in time to read it all. No more can I look into the depths of this unfathomable water, wherein, as momentary lights glanced into it, I have had glimpses of buried treasure and other things submerged. It was appointed that the book should shut with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read but a page. It was appointed that the water should be locked in an eternal frost, when the light was playing on its surface, and I stood in ignorance on the shore. My friend is dead, my neighbor is dead, my love, the darling of my soul, is dead; it is the inexorable consolidation and perpetuation of the secret that was always in that individuality, and which I shall carry with mine to my life's end. In any of the burial-places of this city through which I pass, is there a sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them?"

You see, these people that we sing for, they'll never REALLY know what goes on in our hearts. And that's why it's completely okay to walk in there and completely expose your heart to them when you sing. You'll always be a mystery to them and they'll always be a mystery to you - and that's life. All that matters is that YOU know what's in your heart.

So maybe the person/people you're singing for will see a flash of the treasure that's in your heart. Maybe they won't. Regardless, they'll never be able to capture it. It's your treasure. And don't forget that - it's TREASURE.

You only have to show up and do your best. You might fail. Failure is a hell of a lot better than mediocrity, though. This has been a hard lesson for me to learn but I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.