Well ……… the Ayala show stole the wind from my sails. There are some substantial and rational explanations for this but mainly (although note, not exclusively) it’s just me doing that thing I do and being ridiculously hard on myself. Ah well. It hurts for a bit but it always makes me better in the end.
The night was cold and damp and I guess that’s what made my tape recorders (yes plural … recorders) choke (unbeknownst to me) which means that Chino got a completely blank tape and that ALL of my back ups and accountability are defunct. I actually think I did a pretty good job but no one will ever know that because my accountability tapes are crap. Sadly you can hear the intro to each band “Hi this is my accountability for _____” and then the tape drags and you hear the next “Hi this is my accountability for _____”. Nothing in between the greetings but alien blips and bloops. I recouped as best I could by turning in a total written accountability and now I’m just crossing my fingers and hoping that will be good enough. I hate being forced into doing something out of the norm from what everyone else is doing but I especially hate it when I’m already the one already wearing Milk Bone underwear in a dog eat dog world. Other than that written accountability, all I have to speak for my own performance Saturday are my numbers and my rankings. Sigh. I want to slit my wrists but, after all, it’s just marching band … and I’m not brave enough to anyway. My vow this week is to figure out, once and for all, how to use that dastardly little digital voice recorder I bought so this never happens again. In the meantime I have to content myself with my written accountability being safely tucked in an overnight envelope and sitting somewhere in a courier van winding it’s merry way to its destination in Walnut Creek.
Note to self
I hate electronic technology. Perhaps this is why I’ve never owned a vibrator. I mean really isn’t that the last place I want to trust something electronic?
My Elkies performed on Saturday night at the Oakmont show and I’m sorry I wasn’t there. Based on what I’ve heard so far, it didn’t go very well … well hell that’s not accurate … sans the candy coating, from what I’ve heard it was actually genuinely awful. I don’t know the particulars yet but I find myself not even wanting to go to rehearsal tonight to find them out. Damn! I knew the opener would be a mess … no big surprise there … but I really expected the middle of the closer to be the guard’s saving grace. Sigh. I need to go kick this problem, whatever it turns out to be, squarely in the ass at tonight’s rehearsal. Period.
Note to self
This weekend holds an important lesson …. as incredibly and truly hideous as some of the performances were that I witnessed at the Ayala show, I still have to doff my hat to those programs and the effort I saw on the field exactly because I know, first hand, how nearly impossible it is to teach a field show in the brief 6 weeks between the first day of school and the first performance of the season. Congrats to all those bands I saw on Saturday who pulled it off … whose shows, although mostly a hot mess, made it to the field in some semblance of a real performance.
So ….. today’s tentative plan is to whine pitifully and feel sorry for myself until 5:00 pm at which point I will officially get over myself, lick my right index finger and hold it up in the air in search of a breeze. Thus I will find the wind I need to fill my sails before 6:00 tonight.
.
