Panic in the music room

Breathe, he just needed to try to remember to breathe in and out and again, slowly. Just keep breathing, why did that sound like a song?
Such a mundane and simple thing. All newborns are able to breathe, animals breathe without thinking. So why was I finding it so hard?

I looked about the small practice room that I was standing in. It was small and airless with no window to allow anything to escape and only had a small piano, a music stand, my prized cello and me.

I knew the piece of music I was going to perform to the audience waiting very well, I had practiced for hours. I probably could play it backward, on one memorable practice session I did play it backwards, it sounded awful. And yet it felt the music had left and deserted me.

The butterflies in my stomach were churning, I could feel chunks of bile rising in my throat, threatening. Anxiety skittering around me like a small prancing and dancing pony. All day I had avoided thinking about how anxious I was feeling about this performance. Putting my head in the ground and like a little child sticking my fingers in my ears and shouting ‘lalalala’ and pretending that nothing was happening tonight.

But why did I feel so unbelievably terrified? Was it really worth playing the cello if I felt like this? My cello teacher always says that nerves are good that the adrenaline will help me become a better performer, something about being more emotive or whatever. Sometimes I can lose myself in the music. I don’t think that will happen today. I look at my hands, they feel weird and won’t stop shaking. That will make playing my cello a bit of a challenge.

They gave me a ten minutes warning for when they want me on stage. But I don’t want to go; I can’t do this. I knew if I looked in a mirror I would see a pasty faced frightened looking rabbit looking back at me. My face would be an olive green punctuated by deep brown freckle spots, and my short curly red hair would be standing up on end from me gripping my head and hair.

The knock of doom suddenly arrived. It could not have been 10 minutes! The rhythm of my breath sped up with heavy pants bellowing out of my open fish mouth. In tandem my heart rate appeared to spike, the vein in my neck jumping and throbbing in my throat. I wiped cold damp hands down on my rumpled white shirt and attempted to rearrange by sober grey tie which again felt like a noose around my neck. In what seemed like cinematic slow motion I moved across the room and gingerly lifted my cello from where it had been leaning against the piano and picked up my bow.

I blinked and time appeared to skip and I now found myself standing in the wings of the stage ‘ready’ to perform grasping my cello and bow.

I blinked again and time again appeared to shift and ripple. I was now sitting on a stool in the middle of the stage. My cello teacher, Naomi was sitting behind me on the grand piano ready for to start. Stricken, I gaped my audience. They stared back at me waiting, expectant, judging.

It felt like years, an eternity but it was probably only minutes. The time passing lost meaning to me. We waited. I was the first to look away, the chicken that I am. I looked down at my hands, at the ‘things’ in my hands. I realised I had no idea what they were, what they were doing in my hands or what to do with them. My whole body began to violently vibrate. I could hear the introductory chords of the piano, had Naomi signalled to me we were about to start? The buzzing of swarms of bees in and around my head was beginning to violently block out the music and all other noise.

Blink. I was now standing outside the building. How did I get here? I am leaning, shaking so much like a tall building within an earthquake, ready to fall apart and tumble down like Humpty Dumpty, broken. There is nothing in my pale shaking hands. What should be there? I look at the hard raised skin on the tips of my fingers from hours and hours of practicing and playing on my cello. Where is my cello? The thought thunders through my brain, the voice of god or maybe my mother. I flinch almost believing one or the other is standing next to me screaming these words.

A new rapidly panic spreads through my body like a wildfire, what has just happened? I turn and look towards the building I had run from. I can’t go back.