Market Survival

I watched the Oscar's last night. No, more similar to the days of radio, I listened to them while typing, doing laundry, and vacuuming and didn't miss a thing. The movies the pundits expected to win, "King's Speech" and "Social Network," interested me as examples of Creative Nonfiction, the current hot genre. And I agree they both did a terrific job of making a true story very dramatic.

Why do we love these popularity contests? I rate the Oscar's alongside a few other (popularity) contests that I rarely watch, like American Idol, Who's Got Talent, Iron Chef, Top Model and Survivor. The world loves a winner, whether in ski jumping or break dancing. Tension builds; fumble with the envelope; "and the Oscar goes to... " Glitter, stars in our eyes, believe in the dream of fame and riches.

Saturday I went with my chorus students to do a "flash mob" performance at Emeryville Public Market food court. Hardly a mob: we had 7 singers able to participate. At Oakland Tech, we had achieved a pretty high level of skill in preparing a break up skit followed by a wild rendition of "I Will Survive." Parents and I all knew we were taking a risk, experimenting, trying something new and uncertain. When we got there, sure enough, it was more crowded and louder than we anticipated. We couldn't find an electric outlet. My students suddenly got stage fright. People in the crowd could sort of tell we were going to do something because we were standing around talking about it-- surprise element gone. The final blow happened when the singers couldn't hear the recorded accompaniment on the boombox. Hey, they did a great job a capella anyway. Two young men from Vacaville danced along.

But it was not glitzy or slick. My students' faces reflected their disappointment. We failed to measure up to the proficiency of our practice sessions and failed even to come close to our expectations. Too many things were out of our control. So did we fail? We would not have won any prizes, for sure. Yet the people who saw and heard us enjoyed it. The workers in the nearby food stands loved it. The parents, friends and one grandmother who formed our claque loved it.

What makes it so hard to take risks and fail to meet expectations? How do we define winning? My son's soccer coach, Dave McKeithen, used to say during a season in which the team didn't win a single game: "Did you run fast? Did you sweat? Did you have fun? You're a winner!" In my eyes our brave band of shy beginning singers won the Oscar's on Saturday. From the beginning of the year they moved from being so quiet I could hardly hear them, from being so shy they couldn't even sing solo in front of each other (let alone an audience), from having a vocal range of only four or five notes to this: over an octave vocal range, good projection, and taking risks to sing in front of their scoffing peers at assemblies and singing without technical support in front of a huge crowd of strangers in a busy food court.

Check out the video on UTube under "Market Survival."