in the interest of me using cohost more i am going to vent about something.
putting this under a cut bc it is a BIG wall of text. also, content warning for trauma shit related to a shitty music ensemble director (not any of my current ones)
turns out that when my choir is stopping a lot bc the song is difficult and we’re doing a section that’s new to us, and said song contains the word “gloria” being repeated, i end up having trauma responses relating to my terrible college choir and the way i found myself flinching whenever the director stopped us, in this case the specific way he would yell “GLO. RIA. GLO. RIA.” at us bc whatever we were doing was never good enough for him
also, later in the rehearsal, when we were doing a Completely Different Song, but also a section that was new to us and difficult
person: we should go through the whole song, including the new difficult part and also this one part we haven’t gone over at all
everyone else: haha yeah let’s do it
me, literally having a flashback: (very quietly) no no no no no
(we do it)
everyone: haha that was a dumpster fire but wasn’t it fun
me: (terrified that someone is going to yell at me or something will happen)
our director: if that was scary to you…that’s okay, it was scary to me too
me: (is scared, but Not In The Way They Mean)
like. idk. ifeel so ridiculous calling it trauma because i kinda feel like the only reason it hurt me as badly as it did was bc i was coming into that choir directly after i'd Just gotten away from another abusive teacher. a martial arts instructor whose abuse targeted Me Specifically, while this choir director didn't do much of anything that was directed specifically at me.
(i haven't vented about the martial arts instructor on this site yet but HOO BOY. i have over a decade of vents about her, and how comprehensively she fucked me up, floating around elsewhere at this point.)
i know from talking to other people from my college that i am by no means the only one who has had bad experiences with that choir director, but i don't know if any of them would necessarily say he TRAUMATIZED them.
and i get that my experiences going in would of course mean i'd be affected differently, i don't need to be reminded of that
and it's like. i don't know if he traumatized me but he definitely retraumatized me and i don't entirely know or care if there's a difference
and then of course there's the thing where people treat strictness from a music ensemble director as just, like, the norm, and don't acknowledge that it can be abusive or otherwise shitty? to an extent, that's a thing with abusive teachers in general, but i feel like it's Especially a thing with abusive music teachers. and that's not getting into the fact that some people will interpret any criticism of an individual musician and/or educator as, like, disrespecting the entire field of music and/or education…
