NBF's DJ

I've been asked to audition for a teacher. Somehow this audition is a huge life-changing deal. She has already decided to reject me - that's clear - and the audition is merely a formality. The trouble is that my music isn't played by someone born into a wealthy enough family for her.

I start. She immediately covers the keys so I can't see what I'm doing. Fine, I accept that as a teaching technique with some students, but it's a little weird at an audition. She then starts demonstrating arpeggios, Hanon moves, elaborate sostenuto progressions, the works. I'm out of practice and intimidated. I'm not about to show her the music I've written - she's a hostile force.

This is right after I've been introduced to two unattractive gentlemen and asked to choose between them. "Neither" was not an accepted option, so I am now on the blacklist with this piano woman.

Finally, I've had enough. I start playing Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer" - and not perfectly, either, but just because I like playing the song.

She stops the audition and asks me to talk to an adjudicator on my way out.

Before this, I'm on my way to the audition room and I'm walking through a huge house, very clean and spacious. I see lions and antelopes and other huge beasts materializing before my eyes - some of them being ice sculptures, yet alive. At one point I say there are lions, but my sister says, "Lions? There are no lions," and gives me a significant look as if to say, "Don't tell this lion he's a lion!" I pick up on that and say, "Of course there are no lions, because there are no predators. Lions eat people." Then I catch a hurt expression in the lion's face, and I hastily add, "Except the good lions, of course."

Real-life parallels: I've been helping my 20-month-old nephew play the piano. He keeps trying to close the keyboard cover. I showed him how to sweep the keys with his palms and he's fascinated with trying to do that. My sister has repeatedly been correcting things I say in front of the child and ways I deal with the child - in a nice, toddler-friendly voice, of course.