To this day, the sound of any live reed instrument still yields a physical reaction in my body. I feel suddenly liable to fold my lips over my teeth and press them together so hard that they turn white while an uncomfortable chill travels through me. Every child in my family was forced to play an instrument for a sufficient period of time. Technically, my school was the one to force, or give, every student the chance to learn a musical instrument. But I was destined to continue mine until most others had quit. My older sister played the flute. My brother played the trumpet. I, for some stupid reason that I’ve racked my brain trying to figure out, decided to try the clarinet.

From nearly the beginning, I hated it. I started playing the clarinet in fourth grade. Every Wednesday, all the fourth and fifth graders would get split up by instrument into our respective classrooms and learn to play “Ode to Joy” and “Simple Gifts” for the afternoon. I figured that if I practiced enough, maybe I would someday enjoy it. But I hated practicing, and would cry about this fact as I sat at my music stand at home, screwing the pieces of my clarinet together. I learned the correct embouchure and changed my reeds regularly instead of letting them chip and decay, but getting better was never satisfying to me. I just didn’t like it.

By sixth grade, I was still miserably continuing my musical pursuits. Middle school concert band was way more stressful than it sounds. In order to get a good grade in the class, you had to “pass” every scale, of which there were twelve. To “pass” a scale you had to answer some music theory questions about it—like, what’s the tonic anyway?—and then play it perfectly in front of the entire class. If you failed a “pass off,” you had to wait a week to try that scale again. On “pass off” days, I would watch the clock dreadfully until band class rolled around and psych myself out so much that the scales I had been practicing perfectly for the entire week prior always sounded pitiful. I also didn’t even like the actual music-and-songs part of band. By the end of middle school, I begged my parents to let me quit. After five long years, they agreed.

In high school, I tried choir. Despite my ugly band experience, my public school still had a great music program, and I had wanted to try choir ever since I saw my fellow peers doing it in elementary and middle school. It was in this introductory high school women’s choir that I fully realized what I had sort of always known: I was just an average singer. I could be instructed, but my natural musical abilities were, like they had been on the clarinet, just alright.

You see, contrary to my hatred of the clarinet, I have always loved performing. I started doing the after-school theater program at my elementary school in first grade. I played a Gretel in “The Sound of Music,” a Flounder in “The Little Mermaid,” an Elphaba in “Wicked,” a Lock in “Nightmare Before Christmas,” and definitely a few more roles that I can’t recall. I use the article “a” because there were multiples of each character. We were elementary schoolers, which meant we were apparently not old enough to shoulder the weight of an entire character role. It was Gretel #2 or Elphaba #4, the numbers delineating which scenes you were allowed to appear in as that character. My costumes were always elaborate and my delivery was always confident. Still, I wanted more. I wanted the attention on me the whole time, not just for one scene.

As a nine year old, I was introduced to the world of dance. This is actually rather late in the dance world, considering that a professional ballerina has to start around age two or three. I was introduced by way of the musical theater camp my best friend’s dance studio put on every summer, in which four weeks of rehearsal would go towards one performance of a pre-chosen musical. I had also started taking actual dance classes that were not related to musical theater during the school year at the same dance studio.

The studio would eventually become my own over the next decade. But it was at the studio’s musical theater camp that I was “discovered.” Even though I only had a singular year of dance under my belt as a ten year old, I was cast as Willy Wonka in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” I was given an actual role because I could act, not because I could dance or sing. (Note that there was no number after the name of the role.) I was, indeed, the one and only Willy Wonka. I would go on to play a series of “substantial” roles. Acting was what I knew I was good at. It was easy, it was comfortable, and it was more rewarding than any other pursuit I’d encountered thus far.

Now, I know I said I was introduced to the world of dance and all I’ve been talking about is musical theater, but bear with me. After I got too old to do the musical theater camps, I still took dance classes during the school year for around four to seven hours each week and was a part of the performance group that did community appearances on the weekends. I kept this up until I graduated from high school and thus also graduated from my studio. During these years, I was also a permanent resident of the back line. I had gotten a late start, and always loved acting and singing more than I loved the technique of dancing. There were always going to be better dancers than me who tried harder, and I knew I had little chance at ever being more than decent. It was around this point that I also realized I would never be a “triple threat” because you can’t be good at one of the threats and then just border on satisfactory with the other two.

But I still loved my dance teachers, I loved going to class, and, of course, I loved the annual recital every year, where we did three shows over the course of a day as a culmination of all the work we’d done in class that past year. Unfortunately, as with many dance studios, a toxic culture of nepotism, unnecessary drama, and a gradual decrease in effort by our performance group over time infected the atmosphere. By high school, I was in the oldest age performance group, and most (but not all) of the girls I danced with and known for the last ten years had basically stopped trying. They were all good dancers—they’d made it thus far, after all—but they were no longer trying to be better. Perhaps it was that they too realized they wouldn’t be doing this forever, or maybe the toxicity just became too much. Whatever it was, we plateaued into mediocrity.

Simultaneously, though, I was still trying the theater thing. My high school theater program’s musicals were the big leagues, much more competitive than the summer camps I had been doing. I got a few callbacks, but I never had the voice for a starring role, or even a non-starring role. My senior year, I made my debut as “Woman on Train” in the fall play and tried not to think of this debut as simultaneously the end of my theater career. I was not trying to go to college for it (nor did I want to) and probably wouldn’t have access to built in theater opportunities in the same way ever again.

I miss performing regularly and, while COVID-19 definitely contributed to the lack of chances I’ve had to do so in the last two years, most of the phasing out of that part of my life has been my own doing. I know I can seek it out in college if I really want to, but something has been stopping me. I will always be obsessed with being on a stage, but I know my life will never revolve around it the way it once did or the way I thought it might when I was an adult. Maybe I’m just not cut out to be labeled a “theater kid” my whole life, but I am still in the process of learning to love something that much and then let it go. 

I can go back on the hypotheticals all I want: maybe I wasn’t inherently “good” enough, or I didn’t work hard enough, or I didn’t love it enough, or I didn’t want it enough. But ultimately at some point I have to come to terms with the fact that mediocrity can also be enough. It is still worthwhile to keep doing something that you’ll never be the best at, especially if you’re in love with it, as much as society tries to convince us otherwise. The culture of dropping skills we’re not immediately good at is normalized, but we shouldn’t be afraid to continue with casual hobbies, or even diehard passions, that we only end up okay at.

Performing was where I could express myself; it’s where I was always happiest and it’s where I found an actual lasting community. The process of feeling like you’re good at something when you’re younger and then flattening in ability until you reach mediocrity is never fun. As dumb as it sounds, it also allowed me to grow up and find a part of myself I wouldn’t have been able to find otherwise. So thank you performance and thank you mediocrity. The journey has been bittersweet.

Emma Kendall can be reached at erkendall@wesleyan.edu.