Hoosier Mama, a leek and sausage biscuit and black light roast coffee later, I’m feeling much better about my last place voice competition stance last night. I was the first one to sing and gave my most heartfelt and technically sufficient performance so far in my singing career.. but it landed me last place out of the 5 singers competing for $5000 worth of prize money.

I woke up in a fuzz this morning, having slept for over twelve hours. My eyes gazed at the congratulatory flowers on my desk, reminding me of my successes earlier this week. A mix of emotions rose me out of bed. I lugged myself out of my apartment, hobbled to the closest coffee shop, feeling the left-over pain from the Chicago Marathon in my feet exacerbated from standing in 4 inch heels all night along the way. There, I buried my mind in my biology homework. A slide read:

“measuring the integrity of sound processing at basic levels of the auditory system opens a window on human communication and the imprint of a life spent in sound”

OK, so everyone in that competition room heard something different last night depending on their life spent in sound. For me, I heard my best performance to date, felt the emotion of the content and what it means to me, which might have been out of context for the rest of the singers or judges in the room. Maybe, being the youngest person in the room, my sound was less impressive, or maybe I just need my “life spent in sound” to be curated in a different way through more experience.

In the 12 hours since the competition, I’ve been thinking about how these feelings are manifesting themselves, and how, as I make a career switch, the notion of subjectivity will carry through from a life spent in sound to a life spent in taste.

I pull up an article about Michelin Guide inspectors out of curiosity. The criteria that inspectors base their award decisions are the following:

Michelin Inspector’s 5 Restaurant Rating Criteria:
1. Quality of products
2. Mastery of flavor and cooking techniques
3. The personality of the chef represented in the dining experience
4. Value for money
5. Consistency between inspectors’ visits

The subjectivity that frustrated the hell out of me in the results for the show last night and that has slowly been pushing me towards a world of gastronomy will remain. Maybe that’s why I’m attracted to it all: the ephemeral, subjective, experiential nature of an opera performance, a dining experience. The peaks and the valleys are thrilling, and the discussion of why is more important than the final results, whether a Michelin Star or a Grammy.

Connecting this back to my Biological Foundations of Sound and Music class: experience changes the afferent (ear to brain) processing capability of the neurological auditory pathway.

This is all going to take time. Back to the bottom of the totem pole.