Ethan Wong, an ex-prodigy violinist, thinks it's not meant to be.
After his latest mental breakdown at his last violin competition, where he placed tenth out of ten contestants, he's not sure why his music professor appointed him the soloist for th...
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The thing they don't tell you about child prodigies is that, more often than not, they fall off the face of the earth before they even reach adulthood. The pressure to succeed, the rising improvement of peers, and the fact that there's always another younger, far greater prodigy to take your place meant our relevancy was short-lived.
Burnout, they called it.
Or as I liked to call it, the way the world worked. A cruel one, but that was just reality.
But like many burnout high school students, I had thought college would be the ultimate make-or-break moment—a new beginning in hopes of chasing that dream of being the next Yo-Yo Ma of musicians I had envisioned when I had first picked up the violin at four years old. I knew the chances were slim and that being on the fringe of a mental break was inevitable, but I couldn't be what every child of first-generation Asian Americans fears: a failure.
Giving up on the violin would be the epitome of failing, and I had already failed in my parent's eyes one too many times.
So under the duress of my parent's wishes to pursue anything STEM-related, I bet my entire future on music, even if it meant being as tautly strung as the strings on my instrument. It had to work, or everything I had lived for and ultimately given up on was for naught.
That was what I had hoped would happen after high school, anyway.
That my name wouldn't futilely disappear from the names of prodigies, replaced by a hundred more that would surely out best me.
Until my latest competition against my Berklee College of Music peers proved there was no hope for a has-been prodigy.
Tenth place. Last place.
What a joke.
The icing on the cake was that out of those ten students, our orchestra professor, Alan Hiroshi, had announced I'd be the soloist in our traveling showcase. The irony of it all was a headache to work around that not even the bus ride here helped with. Even the most upbeat or soothing playlists couldn't quell the impending panic attack I was bound to face in Manhattan.
The Manhattan, yes. In New York City, where dreams come true, as they say. What a load of bull.
My only dream was to let this showcase be done with.
Our professor pointed to the Empire Hotel, with its massive red sign up top. It looked way too extravagant for a traveling college orchestra, but Berklee was a private university, no doubt enough money to splurge with our increasing tuition. And yet, we still had to pay a percentage to go. But as much as I didn't fancy the idea of performing a violin solo, being this close to Julliard was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
I had always wanted to go there, where the prestigious of the prestige go—where prodigies went. A place where I was sure that even if I had placed tenth out of ten contestants, I'd be a hundred times better than I was now. If I could sneak away from practice this weekend, that was where I would hang out. Maybe it'd re-spark any residual hope I had left of making a name for myself.
