Another week, another challenge, another reflection.

I've just finished an extremely intense week, full of sound (mostly definitely too loud), people, stress and tiredness. It was also the last project of the Symphony Orchestra of Academy of Music in Poznań in which I had to participate to gather enough ECTS points to obtain a respected (but not so prospective) title of Master of Arts next year. And it was also the first time when the CIM gave out all passes for our concert in two hours (althought they are always free of charge)!

After hundreds of times of rehearsing the part of the first violin in Verdi's 'Requiem' and giving two, utterly tiresome concerts, I assured myself again that being a musician is one of the most devastating things that may happen to you in your entire life. Or maybe I should say 'during' your entire life, because normally you start before you find out how to say 'dog' in English, and it turns out that at the age of 21 you've already spent more than 75% of your life playing your instrument. Furthermore, you have to be aware of the fact that if you accidentally end up sitting near to the concertmaster, what means that you have to play with him (or her, like this time) the unfeasible solo part in the 'Offertorio', and you fail on one of the concerts, other musicians will make fun of you for next 300 years. And even though it sounds like a stupid trifle that should be as significant as the opinion of the Venice Commission for our government, it actually hurts a lot. Mainly because you're never as vulnerable as when you decide to open your soul in front of other people. Especially, when some of them live on other people's failures and derive from them a kind of disgusting and strange pleasure.  Contrary to writers, painters, film-makers and other kind of artists who have the possibility to rewrite, rethink and retake their work again and again, we have only one chance to do it. Hic et nunc. Nothing else. Sometimes it works and sometimes it just doesn't.

Few hours after the second concert I came to another conclusion. Being a musician is one of the most beautiful things that can happen to you in (and during) your entire life. Tiredness, stress, mental and physical sacrifice, years of exposing your heart to be devoured by vipers, always hungry for sb's failure... All these things are nothing compared to what you feel when you see tears on the faces of the most important people in your life, or, even more, on the faces of the strangers, who let you guide them to the places they've never been to, deep inside themselves.