The Movie

This weekend, some of my friends and I attended one of the best movies I have seen in a long time, Fame. I don't think I need to justify why I like it because I already know and so would any one who knew me, but this was extremely moving and i have to do this.

Fame takes place in the New York High School of Performing Arts. I can't tell you how amazing I think it would be to go to a school for the performing arts. I love singing, dancing, acting, and playing cello and bass. In the movie, one of the coolest things I saw was when they had "lunch." I almost wouldn't call it lunch but the coolest freestyle jam session ever. It wasn't completely new because that happens in almost every musical that has ever existed, but it was taken to the next step. It included dancers, singers, rappers, guitarists, orchestral instruments, band instruments, drums, keyboards, and everything else you can imagine. I dream that could be possible somewhere in the world and that someday I could be there and be a part of that amazing experience.

I hope that I can get into a great music college and that i could perform music as a career. This movie was a good way to look at how competitive it will be and what could happen. At the beginning of the kids freshman year, the principle gives them a figure that show how competitive the business is. She says that they received 10,000 applications and only 200 students made it in. this made me think about my talent as a performer compared to others. I thought about just the friends I had gone with to the movie. One of them is a brilliant piano player and is the only junior alto in my schools top choir. Another made the top show choir sophomore year along with the top choir and was one of the 12 members in the vocal jazz ensemble. The last has been in every play it was possible for him to be in and has beaten me out for ever solo in show choir that we have both auditioned for. That was where I stood in the mix of only four juniors in my school alone. Think of how many other kids there are who must be five times as talented as I could ever be and they all want the same thing I want maybe even the same spot at college.

So what if I did make it in to a music school, how would I survive? Over the course of the movie, many of the characters were dropped from the school for their in ability to progress or their poor grades. If I am not even the most talented in my high school, how will I ever be able to survive any weed out classes that a college could throw at me? I can't afford to take voice lessons or cello lessons privately so there is no way, without scholarships, I will be able to go to a great music school should I prove that I am talented enough to go to one, and that would mean I would have to be exceptional. I realize that I am not that exceptional like my friend the piano player. She was able to play all the songs that the main piano playing character could on her leg during the movie by memory. I don't have talent anywhere near that.

I am not saying I don't have some talent and more than most, but I don't have the god given ability of my friends. I don't have perfect pitch and I can't sing high "C"s. I am not naturally funny or great at being any character that is thrown at me. I don't play with great technique and I can't sight read for anything. I have had to work hard to be where I am now and I still haven't reached the top of the ladder in any of the performing arts yet.

So what drives me to keep after my dream of music? One word: Love. I love music and performing more than anything else in the world. I realize that I may never succeed at being a great musician but if I didn't try I would be denying my heart the chance to do what it so desperately wants to do. I always have the choice, should performing fail, to become a music teacher to help nurture young people with the same dream I have succeed in their endeavors. The most inspiration I have gotten through these years has been from the teachers and directors that have helped me develop what talent I do have.

I know that in the next years I head down an uncertain and brutal path. I can't tell you what will come of my music, but then again who ever knows what will come of their life and love. All I can say is that I will never give up dreaming that some day there will be in a place where everyone jumps on the lunch tables singing in perfect harmony and I will be right there, helping the melodious chords rise and flow from my heart with everyone else. that is where I belong.