I sat curled up, behind the lights that illuminated to board, and washed everything else out. The papers, the wrenches, and the all important script; laden with sticky notes and lead. The numerous buttons had haunting shadows of themselves beneath them, and the mute buttons red glow splashed my face. The show had begun.

  This was my past. It has become my goal to make it my future. What I ‘want to become when I grow up’ is uncommon, and it is not the first time that this option has passed through my consciousness. I did not think it reachable, or even reasonable; because the only one I had seen do what I want to do, happened to be a self made man. He had become a self-made Audio Producer. Only recently have I come to understand that I could become what I had unknowingly been practicing for. I had been practicing to make music speak volumes through the silence of movies. To monitor the microphones on Broadway, and let the actors and actresses voices reverberate and wrap around the audience in a beautiful song or impassioned speech, that they could almost touch. I have come to realize that what I want in my future is to plaster microphones to the doll like faces; and remember my old instructor telling me with a fatherly smile, “Mics before make-up” and grin.

  Such goals seem almost unimaginable, but I have seen and spoken to someone who worked in the field at Broadway. Some of my goals have been met, because I have already monitored the microphones on six plays and three musicals, and have been head of a sound crew.  I have volunteered and run band and chorus concerts, and two school talent shows . I have been paid for four dance companies, three studios, and a talent show.

  However, my ultimate goal can only be reached by attending the Art Institute of Houston, or some other branch of that school. I will further my training in the Audio Production classes. Over the three year course I will learn and perfect the skills that I need to become and work under a sound manager, and graduate with a Bachelors of Science. I will live up to my instructors encouraging words of “good mixing.’ People’s voices will be heard.