Berberis' World

Tuesday, 28th February 2012.

So, an audition. For a choir. If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll be aware that the last audition I had went very badly, and resulted in me having to leave a choir with whom I had (largely) hugely enjoyed singing.

I say ‘largely’ because there were times when I felt wholly inadequate and thoroughly isolated. There was even one occasion when I allowed myself to be bullied by a couple of stuck-up, sarcastic women who thought they were a cut above the vast majority of the rest of the choir, who were at least polite and friendly.

It was the end of 2008, and we were rehearsing Brahms’ Deutsches Requiem for a concert the following April. Due to ongoing building work at Bishopsgate, we were at Henry Wood Hall, just off Borough High Street, and I’d decided to sit in the front row. Not sure why, but it was probably because I was expecting Steph to turn up and we’d have a giggle. But she didn’t – I don’t remember why – and I ended up next to two people I normally avoided.

I threw myself into the rehearsal, using the glorious music to express the maelstrom of emotion I’d been bottling up since my mum’s death a few months earlier, as well as the unexpectedly hurtful things my brothers had said to me in the months before she’d died. After one particularly loud and cathartic section – Tod, wo ist dein Stachel? Holle, wo ist dein Sieg? – I overheard one of these women say to the other that I was “a bit loud”, in a tone which made it clear she wished I wasn’t. The second said to the first to keep her voice down in case she was overheard.

Instead of responding with a “too late for that”, which might have shut them up, I kept quiet. Unfortunately, in doing so, all my energy disappeared… along with my voice. To add insult to injury, the second woman then quipped that the first’s comment had at least had the desired effect. After the break, feeling thoroughly deflated and even more isolated without my singing partner-in-crime, I returned to my seat (and to this day I still don’t know why the hell I didn’t move to the back of the hall where there were plenty of empty chairs) and left the rehearsal depressed, and angry at myself that I’d allowed someone to make me feel that way.

The point of this tangent is not only to tell what happened but also to try to give some indication of how much my singing and my overall mental health are linked (and I’ll accept that this is a link I may have embroidered since a GP suggested singing as therapy). If I can’t sing, I feel anxious. However, the converse is also true, and it’s that that affects me at auditions… which is why I try to avoid them.

But this particular audition couldn’t be avoided. Given that most people I work with knew I was in both LCS and the LPC, it was assumed by pretty much everyone that I’d apply to be in the hospital choir. Rowena, one of the nurses on the children’s ward, gave my name to the Comms office even before the all users email had gone out and three of the 20/20 film crew were in the office within about an hour. I was going to have to audition or spend the rest of my life trying to explain – mainly to myself – why I’d chickened out. I did manage to convince 20/20 (well, Pete and Charlotte) that there was absolutely no chance of me singing on camera in the seminar room but I knew I’d have to do it eventually. I tried to push the thought to the back of my mind – being incredibly busy helped – but it was going to happen no matter how I felt.

And the day duly dawned. We were auditioned in groups of about 20, and there were 10 groups. My group was the second up and we all gathered in the former Children’s Surgical Ward just before 10am. There were obviously departments where more than one person had been chosen, but I couldn’t see anyone I knew. We were called in and I trailed in at the end, taking a seat at the end of the front row.

Gareth introduced himself and the film crew, and we all did likewise. We warmed up our voices and then were invited to sing the refrain from ‘A Spoonful of Sugar’. Helps the medicine go down. Hospital choir. We all laughed, albeit nervously, and sang along. Then Gareth said for the back two rows only to sing, then the front two rows, the left hand side, right hand side, you four… you two… you.

Which meant me. He decided to start with me simply because I was on the right hand end of the front row. So I had to stand up and sing. In front of 19 other volunteers and a film crew. And Gareth Malone. My knees felt as though they were made of water, and I was sweating and shaking. Having sung the refrain once, and not very confidently, I had to sing it again and again – first quieter, then louder, now in a lower register, now a higher register – as he made notes. Then I had to sing one particular note in a three-note chord. By the time I sat down, I felt as though I’d run a marathon.

And that was that. The rest of the process was a bit of a blur. I remember two people particularly: a consultant sitting in the back row who turned out to be tone-deaf and someone who said “I can’t sing that because I’ve got laryngitis” before launching into ‘Girl from Ipanema’, her laryngitis clearly not a problem with that particular arrangement of words and music.

As to whether or not I was successful in my first audition since being rejected by Neville Creed 372 days – one year and one week – ago, I won’t know until the end of the week.