Deep dive · fiction
The Audition
Forty-one auditions. Four callbacks. One booking. And then the room that mattered.
Blaise keeps count the way a scientist keeps data: audition no. 1 (cut, first round), no. 17 (first callback), no. 23 (the one that taught him about stillness), no. 30 (the no that hurt most, pencil page, small handwriting). Each entry ends with a lesson. Each lesson ends with the same line: one more sunrise.
The Marquee Room showcase wasn't an audition — that was the point. Delgado got him three songs in front of ninety listening people, and Blaise sang like the room was the last one he'd ever get. He didn't know a casting director was in row six. Nobody ever knows who's in row six.
The callback
The call came on a Tuesday, between the morning shift and the dog route. Second-round callback for a new musical workshop — real sides, real panel, a real shot. Blaise walked the Brooklyn Bridge at sunrise the morning of, scarf in the wind, and did the warmups on the rooftop while the choir-less weekday city woke up.
He doesn't tell people how it went. The Ledger entry, gold ink, is three words: “I was ready.” Delgado, reading over his shoulder, said that was the whole lesson of forty-one auditions in one sentence.
“Rejection is just the city mispronouncing your name. Correct it politely and try again.”
Source notes
- Original fiction; the audition count is story canon, not a real record.