The audition

Unlocking the room where my love of music lives.

A True Life Built is a living photo essay on starting over and building a truer life. It’s for anyone, at any age, who is finding the courage to begin again. Subscribe for free weekly posts.

The weekend it all started. June 2022.

Last week, I found myself standing at a piano in the auditorium of an elementary school, singing scales for the first time in 20 years. Outside in the hallway, three other women sat nervously below a bulletin board of fourth grade math problems, waiting for their turn at the piano. We were auditioning for an adult choir, for the chance to spend our Thursday evenings in an auditorium, singing purely for the joy of it.

At the moment, though, I was feeling a heady mix of anxiety and exhilaration. I hadn’t sung in a choir since high school, and my teenage musical knowledge was buried deep in my brain, alongside calculus and the words to every Spice Girls song. I had loved high school choir, loved the long black dresses and the feeling of belonging that came from merging my voice into a magnificent whole.

But when high school ended, my musical practice did too. I felt I wasn’t good enough to carry on. I was passable at piano, good enough to carry a group harmony, but I would never be the star. If I couldn’t be the best at something, why do it at all? So I locked singing away in my Room of Unexplored Talents, another casualty of my stubborn perfectionism.

Then last summer, on a girls’ trip upstate, my friends and I spent an afternoon kayaking down a lazy river. Two to a boat, we floated through the tranquil trees, paddling in unison. My friend started singing an old song, a throwback to childhood campfires and simpler times. Without thinking, I joined in and matched her melody, spinning an impromptu harmony.

“You can sing!” she said in surprise, when we reached the end of our tune.
“I used to,” I said, reflexively shoving music back in its box. “I haven’t sung in years.”
“I’m joining a chorus in January,” she said, “you should do it with me!”
“That could be fun,” I said, without much thought; January was six months away.

A weekend of floating and singing. June 2022.

Later, though, the tone of her surprise tugged at me: “You can sing!” It was the same tone friends used when I began sharing my writing: “You can write! I never knew!”

I had known. I had been drawn to stringing words in a row from my earliest days, but I lacked the confidence to do so publicly. Yet once I started, the words flowed easily, like our river winding its way through the trees. Already I can barely imagine a time where I didn’t call myself a writer.

Music tugs at me in the same way. Recently I went to a live music show, something I haven’t done in years. I drifted on the music, entranced, the notes running in my bloodstream. Losing myself in music felt like cracking the door into that long-locked room in myself and letting fresh air in.

A few days later, my friend texted about the choir and encouraged me to join. The timing felt too serendipitous to ignore, a little nudge from the universe. There was only one problem: I had to audition. I downloaded a sight reading app and started googling questions like “what is a standard time signature” and “what do the dots by the notes mean?” This was not reassuring.

I will say this: sight reading does not come back like riding a bike. It comes back more like ice skating: I remember enjoying it, spending long teenage hours at the ice rink in the mall. But as an adult, I’m wobbling along, acutely aware of how much my feet hurt and how embarrassing it will be to fall. It’s one thing to embrace being a beginner in private, but it’s quite another to do it in public.

Which brings me back to the auditorium, standing beside the piano. The choir director, warm and rumpled in the way of music teachers, took me through some warm-up exercises: scales, rhythm, ear training. Then came the sight reading: she handed me four sheets of music and asked me to sing the alto line while she played all the parts.

All the parts?? I held my sheets and did my best, hitting some notes and missing some others. It felt like grasping for a language rusty from disuse. Some lines came back easily, some hovered just out of my reach. Yet I knew this language, deep in my brain, and it was one I had missed speaking. I finished, painfully aware of every missed note yet flushed with triumph, for I had drawn on a long-dormant sense of myself and felt it stir. The music was still in me.

I handed the sheet music back and held my breath. The choir director smiled at me and said: “We’d be happy to have you. It’s clear you have the basics and the rest will come back. I expect it will only take a practice or two.”  

I floated out of the auditorium and twirled in the street, laughing. Those twenty minutes by the piano had thrown open the door to the room where my love of music lives. I didn’t know if I’d join this choir at this moment—the weekly practices were late—but I knew I wanted music back in my life. I didn’t need to be perfect at singing to enjoy it. I just needed to practice, just needed to let myself sing.

Upstate weekend, June 2022.

One of the unexpected joys of starting over has been hearing from others on similar journeys. If something resonates with you, I’d love for you to leave a comment, drop me an email or share a post with a friend!

Liz is a writer and photographer based in Brooklyn.