Crushed.

"You guys didn't make it."
A sense of disappointment and failure swept right thru me when I received those words. It was the fate of my band's audition for AudioWarfare 2005. I coudn't comprehend the feeling at that moment. The other bands hadn't heard news of the results yet, neither did my other band members. I was the first to hear it. And as I sat there, all the thoughts ran through my head of where we went wrong.

It was a terrible blow to me personally. As a band, we had invested alot of time and money within that one month we practiced together. We had high hopes of winning, what more, to pass the auditions. The long wait for the results was something similar to waiting for my exam results. When I heard that we didn't get in, it was as if, I saw an F for failed on my result slip.

I was told that our band made it to the top 15 but not close enough to clinche top 10. Somehow, our best wasn't good enough. The feedback was, as a band, we were quite tight, except for a stray guitar now and then. Some parts, we weren't exactly with each other. We lost marks for that. Our vocals weren't that impressive. That was another factor. And we did a cover song. We lost marks for originality. We didn't know that if we had our own song, the mark add-up would be higher. Because of this, we took so much pain to perfect the song the way we heard it played. We weren't informed that originality weighed 20% of the overall results.

After such a long wait, that was really disappointing and sad news. I didn't know how to tell the rest of my band members. I felt sorry for them. We had given our best, but it wasn't enough to get us through. I felt heavy.

That night, Chee Kah came over, and we just sat down quietly, not doing anything. We sat in silence. I guess that was our way with coping with grief. I just can't express in words how I felt. But I bet Chee Kah felt the same. It was a mixture of loss, defeat, failure, waste, anger, sadness, missed opportunities, depression and a few more a rolled into one. Our hopes of playing for the finals were dashed. We had built our hopes so high that this fall was gonna hurt so bad. One word that could describe that moment : Crushed!

It felt as if everything we had worked for had been crushed. One of my dreams while in uni was to be able to play for AudioWarfare. I had that chance. But now, I missed it altogether. Since I'll be graduating next year, this was my last attemt at making it. This chance will never come by again.

But at least, I tried. Though we failed, we all knew that we have given our best. And there are a lot of other things other than AudioWarfare. But somehow, I can't shake of that feeling of defeat just yet.