The Violin Recital

I'm standing backstage at a concert hall, violin in hand, when a stagehand tells me I'm on in two minutes. My stomach drops—I haven't practiced in weeks. The program says I'm performing a Bach partita I've never even seen before. I walk out onto the stage anyway, the spotlight blinding me, and the audience is completely silent and expectant. I lift the bow and try to play, but my fingers won't cooperate. The notes come out scratchy and wrong, like I'm sawing at the strings rather than playing them. A few people in the front rows shift uncomfortably. I keep going, hoping muscle memory will kick in, but it doesn't. Halfway through, I notice my sheet music is blank—just white pages fluttering on the stand. My face is burning with embarrassment. The violinist next to me (I don't know why there's another violinist) is playing flawlessly, and I feel like I'm ruining everything. Then somehow I'm in the audience watching myself fail from a distance, which is almost worse. I want to disappear into the floor, but instead I just keep playing the wrong notes until the dream fades and I wake up, my heart still pounding, relief washing over me that it wasn't real.

No interpretation available