so prodigy (my friend) performed at the school festival
so it was the school festival today, i knew about noone but prodigy who was performing. i checked the list of performers and prodigy was the only one i knew and the only one playing piano. therefore i was only excited about prodigy cuz i was not at all interested in those other students i didn't know dancing to pop songs i didn't know.
the only interesting performance besides prodigy was this one film by the school broadcast, it was apparently a parody of a very famous show called 꽃보다 남자, i did not understand one thing except for a temu ad parody in the middle. a teacher i knew and other students who were temu employees were doing the typical temu ad where employees bow down to apologize for not giving any benefits to temu downloaders. specifically they said if students downloaded temu, they would cut every class 20 minutes short. and the audience in the film started throwing things saying they won't fall for this.
anyways there was a bunch of people performing, most of them were mediocre except for the school band (the female lead singer had great english pronounciation and even better singing) and dance group. excluding prodigy cuz she's my bias. anyways everything was loud and pop songs except for prodigy who played almost the only song i recognized. i did not know the title cuz classical music has weird number titles and i am not a classical music nerd that memorizes them, but it was what an 8th grader who was in the same competition as me when i was playing chopin's fantaisie-impromptu for the first time onstage played in that competition. unlike all the other kids who used speakers and microphones and everything that made big sounds, prodigy just played a piano which was quieter than other performances. though it didn't sound as impressive as other performances with multiple people or loud soundtracks, i think i rooted for her because i have played piano before and it is super hard and nervous to play onstage. especially when you are playing classical music that barely anybody has heard of.
anyways somehow the festival ended, i felt like having a convo with prodigy so i just went up to her classroom. at first i was gonna compliment her. but i thought, she must get a lot of compliments already since she literally topped the whole school in the finals and still played a very cool piano piece, therefore if she's like me she would not get a lot from compliments and maybe feel pressured. plus i wanted to know her thoughts.
so i started with, 'cuz i knew you and i played piano before, i think during the festival i focused more on you.' and i asked a question, 'do you think you played well?'
prodigy said no. so i asked why, and she said she made too many mistakes. and i thought 'wow she made mistakes?' and asked why. she said... yeah i don't remember actually. and then i asked why again and she said nothing so i concluded she had nothing to elaborate on her mistakes. (sidenote: it is incredibly fun to ask 'why' and make the other person in a convo give additional info on what they were saying. however a person has told me that pressures the other person to speak too much compared to me. so you mean i'm not supposed to speak too much but also i'm not supposed to make the other person speak too much? i'm confused)
i also asked her if piano was a hobby or something she wants to do professionally, she told me it was a hobby. and i said what i had previously said on this blog, 'i didn't go to hakwon just to study for finals and i got a terrible score, and somehow you did both studies and piano and topped me. you are very cool.'
she laughed. 'what's terrible?' (implying that my score is not terrible)
and i said 'oh yeah you are right i got 3 wrong in total, i'm actually proud of that. why am i deprecating myself like this to praise you. what is this some kind of people pleasing? i hate it when people do this, why do i do this now.'
really though. why do i do that now?
conclusion: i shouldn't focus on the quality of my performance, but rather why it was like that and how i could use the experience. i should make both me and others do that by asking questions not blindly praising.