The shorts have a stripy pattern – two rows in one colour, one row in another. When I was finished I had a lot of ends to weave in… if you don’t knit, I won’t bore you with the details but it’s a time-consuming job.
Finally the day came when I sewed the pattern pieces together into one garment... but instead of triumphant short-wearing, there was consternation. All those woven-in ends created bulk on the crotch seam.
A lot of bulk. It was not a good look.
I had definitely done something wrong – the pattern picture did not include lumpiness in the lower swimsuit area*.
All that time spent knitting! So demoralising!
Like most people, I imagine, I’ve made many mistakes in my lifetime. I’m not talking about life-changing mistakes, and for that I am grateful. No, the kinds of mistakes to which I’m referring are often minor but upsetting. Minor but annoying. Minor but cringe-worthy.
Some of the more memorable mistakes:
Losing a ring that my parents gave me when I was 18, at the age of 33. It slipped off my finger, never to be seen again, thanks to over-enthusiastic use of hand sanitiser whilst travelling.
Writing a review about a dance performance in which a sea of ping-pong balls cascaded over the audience. Only I called them golf balls. Suddenly an act of whimsy sounded more like sadism.
Whilst simultaneously editing a dance magazine and organising a dance awards night, misjudging the dates so that the results of the awards were published just hours before the awards ceremony was due to take place.
To err is human. I know that these kind of mistakes, although upsetting (especially the last) should be learned from and then forgotten. My tendency when things go awry, however, is to brood, not just on the mistake itself, but on my flaws more generally. I lambast myself obsessively for decisions and actions which belong to the past and can't be changed. Recently, though, I had a couple of experiences that have helped me to think a bit differently about mistakes.
As I blogged in January, I’ve been singing with Menagerie choir and we had our show in February. To my delight, I was asked to deliver an edited version of my blog post as the introduction of the show. For novelty value, I entered the theatre on my bike.
There were a few challenges involved in cycling into the theatre. The space between the audience’s knees and the stage was not exactly generous. There was a speed-bump like obstacle to be surmounted at the entrance to the theatre. There wasn’t much room for a run-up outside.
Mostly it went smoothly. One night though, an unexpected wobble saw me almost take out the legs of the front row. In an effort to preserve the integrity of their lower limbs, I lost my balance. Instead of gliding serenely into the venue, I landed up employing a kind of inelegant scooter action to propel me along.
In spite of the fact that my opening speech went smoothly, I became fixated on my wobble. It plagued my thoughts throughout that evening's performance. When I spoke to friends and family afterwards though, they were bemused by my wailings. What felt like the bicycle equivalent of a train smash, was, apparently, not noticeable to the majority of the audience.
Here’s another story. During the Menagerie season, one of our collaborators was singer/songwriter Josh Fontaine. With his dead-pan sense of humour, moody vocals and quirky dance moves, Josh won over the audience easily, wooing even that harshest of critics, my mum. In the midst of one of his fantastic performances, he paused for no apparent reason. Both choir and band relied on his next line for their cue to start and the silence seemed to balloon as we waited. Suddenly, he looked at our conductor, apologised, and resumed singing. As always, he put on a stellar show, and by the end I had forgotten that there had been that momentary silence.
The next day I saw Josh backstage and sought him out to report that one of my friends had been mesmerised by his performance, declaring herself unequivocally in love. He was pleased with this feedback, especially, he said, as he had been thinking about the unscheduled pause.
Josh then recounted what was happening during the silence. He noticed a woman in the front row who reminded him forcefully of his nan (mentioned with great affection in the course of the show). The reflection of the light from the stage on the woman's glasses catapulted him back in time, he said, to a school play. On stage, the younger Josh had searched for his nan in the crowd, locating her by that same reflection of stage-light on her glasses. “The mind made the connection between the two events, providing a flash of sadness that was the intervening years, leaving me forgetting where I was and what line I was meant to be singing,” he concluded.
I thanked Josh for sharing his story with me - such a moving explanation. I assured him that my friend and, I was confident, the audience in general, had not given it any further thought, that the overall magic of the performance had ensured that they would not recall that fragment, and that, in any case, beauty of live performance is that stuff happens, that it doesn’t always got to plan.
Reflecting afterwards on our conversation, I was struck by two things.
The first is this. The explanation behind that momentary pause is beautiful. That silence marked the point at which art and experience collide.
The second is that I should start listening to my own advice.
* Thanks to Odette Mercy for the term “swimsuit area”.