Musician Who Didn’t Learn His Part Explains The Situation Many Times

John Man, excellent young violinist and extensive user of his mouth, was very excited to be performing in a well-paid concert with a good orchestra. Although he was talented enough to play with the group, he had somehow managed to avoid actually learning his part; this was so humorous he made sure to explain it to all the members of the orchestra over and over again.

“It’s so crazy,” he explained. “I haven’t learned my part the way I was supposed to! But, as I will soon make clear, there was a variety of reasons all outside my control that made this comical situation occur.”

After explaining everything to one person, Man made sure to explain it again to every other person as well, showing the sort of dedication and commitment that would be useful for a repetitive process like learning music if that’s your job. He delivered his comments with great enthusiasm, apparently thinking of them as much better ice-breakers than more conventional expressions such as ‘hello’, ‘nice to see you,’ or ‘my failure to prepare has riddled me with deep insecurities that I need to bring up constantly in a doomed attempt to offload my guilt.’

“What a charming character I must be,” he explained. “Although my professional duties were apparent to me weeks ago, I roguishly neglected them and now my involvement in this concert is an inconvenience to everyone around me. Haha!”

The other musicians were pleased to hear this sort of thing all evening. Bob Guy, who was being paid the same fee as Man, said it led him to a much deeper understanding of Man’s artistic temperament. “It would be a mistake to think that Man is just incompetent, as we all did during the first run-through,” he said. “After he made a point of saying things like ‘mate, this is going to be a disaster, I don’t know this at all, haha’ it would be more accurate to say he is deeply unprofessional, and that’s a different thing.”

The conductor, Sally Knobstick, was also satisfied to hear the comments Man kept repeating all evening. “Some aspects of his performance were deeply frustrating,” she said, “such as the fact that he hadn’t prepared at all and most of what he did was wrong. But the good thing about hearing him say things like ‘wow, I really should have learned this, I have no idea what I am doing’, was how that made him appear talented in a quirky, anti-establishment sort of way. I will be sure to hire him again.”

Man was pleased to hear this, as it was exactly what he was going for all along. “Having failed to do my job, I knew that if only I could draw enough attention to that fact, people would appreciate my musical abilities even more,” he explained. “Haha.”