Joey and I auditioned for the youth Rockford Area Music Industries (RAMI) competition last weekend. We spent hours practicing to polish up the three original songs we wanted to perform. I’ve sung regularly onstage since I was 10. I’ve sung at recitals, in church, nursing homes, and several other venues. I’m normally super comfortable singing in front of people, but on stage there was something I didn’t expect: I couldn’t see the audience, not even their silhouettes. There was just blackness. Emptiness. I knew there were people in the dark, but I couldn’t see or hear them. The end of the world seemed to be the end of the stage. Take a step and you could fall endlessly into the nothingness. Way far away, it seemed ages away, were the lights from the judges’ table. They seemed too far to ever reach and their hope — the hope of light, of winning — was more of a taunting fancy that was unattainable. I nodded to Joey telling him I was ready. I heard the familiar riff of our first song start. It was there, the sound, but it wasn’t coming from the guitar. It was coming up towards me from the blackness. The monitors. The sound was coming from the monitors. I got my bearings just in time to sing the first line. I could hear the echo of my voice deep in the dark. There was a faint hum of my voice after I had stopped singing.

Photo credit: Joanna Kay Photography

After the first verse and chorus, something happened. My chest shriveled and finally collapsed after holding back the shaking that started in my stomach and went to the tips of my fingers. The lines of the second verse fell away from me- gone, into the emptiness before me. I grabbed at what was nearest in my mind, the third verse. Completely weak and shaking, I sang with all the power I had left the words to the third verse. Once the song was over, I regained my composure and finished the act flawlessly. The ten minutes of our audition time had flown by.

I found out that no one could tell I messed up the song and that I looked completely natural onstage. Joey and I, along with six other bands, progressed to the final level. Joey and I will get 20 minutes to perform in April’s show before first, second, and third place winners will be chosen. Maybe I will be able to beat the darkness this next time.