Cue the lights

I was sitting in the trombone studio around 9:00 pm one night last week with my quartet, reading through some new pieces, when suddenly and for no reason, the lights went out in the room. My first thought was that there was a power outage on campus. But the others new better. It had never happened to me before, but apparently the lights in the classrooms tend to spontaneously turn off from time to time, especially late at night. I found this kind of strange, but took no notice of it then.

Yesterday afternoon, around 4:30 pm, I had an audition for a summer festival. The audition was going well, I made it through my solo piece and two excerpts and had played rather well, I thought. Then it came time to play Ride of the Valkyries. In the second full measure, I went too high for the F sharp, and missed it badly, then came back down and cracked the next D as well. I recovered and kept going, but figured the damage had been done. Then it happened. Not before I reached the downbeat of bar four, the lights went out. I kept playing for a moment, not sure what else to do, but the guy hearing the audition stopped me. He seemed as perplexed as I had been the week before. I managed to explain that it happened sometimes for no reason, found the lightswitch and flipped it back on. So, everything settled again, I restarted the excerpt, and made it through without incident.

I couldn't have planned it better if I had tried. I'm talking about a matter of maybe three seconds between my mistake and the lights cutting out. It was bizarre. And strangly enough, my first thought as I was leaving the room was of my mother, who always says before every audition that she will be praying for me. When she says this, I usually respond "Okay, thanks" in an appreciative but sarcastic tone. Of course, despite my doubts, it does have its benefits. Just knowing that someone is praying for you can have a big impact. The fact that someone would stop what they are doing to think of you and send their good wishes and intentions is quite comforting in some way, whether or not you believe that they are affecting your fortune by petitioning some higher power. But who's to say?

When I told my mother what happened, she naturally saw it as a sign from God. And what else would you call it? I've always been wary of the idea of a pure coincidence, things falling nicely into place through the workings of chance alone. I think that comes from adding up lots of experiences such as this one, moments which I somehow feel I will never be able to fully explain or understand.