I was not nervous.

The walk down the impossibly long corridor wasn’t a detriment to my resolve.

I was not perturbed by the curious—yet wary—faces of rivals and their parents.

My gut wasn’t doing somersaults as the order in which I was to play certain pieces was explained.

My carefully constructed armor didn’t shatter to pieces as soon as I stepped into the room before the two stony-faced judges.

Fine. I lied. I was nervous; impossibly, helplessly, ridiculously so. And as I drew my bow across the strings, each passing phrase heightened the panic. I was concentrating on all the wrong things—the expressions of my audience, how bad I probably sounded, how I dearly, dearly hoped that no one outside the room could hear me, least of all anyone that I might have known.

Some still-rational part of my mind was already picking apart my performance: the notes, hopefully in tune, but garbled by my adrenaline-spiked speed. The tone, at times frazzled as my shaking arm lurched the bow across the strings. Criticism, criticism—it was all wrong, and the judges, I worried, who calmly noting things, were probably attuned to that. I was quite sure of it.

I had already lost.

In that space in time, all distinctions—chairs, rankings, prestige and shame—should have ceased to be. I should have been focused on more important things, like maybe the audition itself. Not the past, or the future, or the people outside the room, or the people inside the room—all of it should have disappeared but the music.

Unfortunately, the nerves I felt kept me present. Asking myself why I cared about what others thought so much, I had no answer.

A few weeks later, I found myself in the Powell Hall auditorium, watching as scores of musicians warmed up on the stage, chatting, playing, talking to friends in the audience who had come up to greet them.

There was no visible tension. Though I knew that these people must have been feeling some sort of natural pre-performance apprehension, they weren’t so far gone as to become sweaty-palmed wrecks.

At least they had their good humor.

And then the first piece began, a selection of Kalinnkov, and I saw a few of them relax into the music. The conductor, a pretty animated fellow who could have put on a show by himself, added to the atmosphere. For the first time, I was able to appreciate a second layer that I hadn’t even realized I had lost: my connection to the music itself, and not where I hoped my music might take me.

The third piece was what I had bought the tickets for, though; Tchaikovsky’s Concerto in D major, which was going to be played by Joshua Bell.

Bell started out his career as a child prodigy—‘prodigy’ being literal, as he debuted in Carnegie Hall at age 14. Nevertheless, between astounded listening and watching the violinist’s fingers ascend what was probably six or seven positions in one sweeping motion, I became aware of the fact that Bell himself had closed his eyes, lost in his own world. His violin, a mere extension of himself, was simply a tool for his self-expression.

His entire performance was, to my knowledge, flawless, and he was standing there in an auditorium full of expectant people—people who had paid to see, not just hear, him play, and who would probably riot if he missed a single note. The pressure that he undoubtedly faced was unbelievable.

And yet, if he was nervous, which he had every right to be, he didn’t show it.

As I left the auditorium—later than I’d expected, thanks to the considerable amount of time that audience had spent clapping, hoping in vain that Bell might give another encore—I realized that, though I was no Joshua Bell, I could still become lost in the music. I still had the ability, should I try hard enough, to make the audience—and with it, the expectations and the nerves—blur into the background.

I just had to stand there and play.