Six years of classical violin lessons instilled in Luke solid technical skills, but no love of the violin. Then someone handed him a ukulele, and he was hooked. He quickly made a name for himself locally, and when Americas Got Talent came to town, he auditioned successfully for the show.
The seventeen-year-old performed in front of a hometown, to an audience of five thousand. The spotlight obscured the audience but not the three neon red X’s that glowed at his feet. Sharon Osbourne shook her head, and Howard Stern said theatrically, “My mother made me play the clarinet. Your mother should never have let you play the ukulele.” The audience roared with laughter.
Stunned, Luke turned wordlessly and stumbled offstage, where he was accosted by a camera crew: “How do you feel? What do you make of the judges’ feedback?”
Good question.
In the days and weeks that followed, amid red-X nightmares, one thing finally became clear to Luke: The primary purpose of the show is not a thoughtful evaluation of each contestant’s talent, for the contestant’s sake. The main purpose is to entertain the TV audience. This was feedback to him only in the loosest sense. It was evaluation, certainly, almost a parody of evaluation: The judges told him where he stood vis-a-vis a future on the show, and certainly they conveyed their contempt for the ukulele as an instrument.
Luke is still performing. “It wasn’t easy to get back on stage, in part because I had to step onto the same stage three weeks later,” he says. He had previously won the region’s teen talent competition with his playful juxtaposition of Bach, Sinatra, and rock n roll and he was invited to do a showcase performance as the winner.
Now Luke says he wouldn’t trade his America’s Got Talent experience for the world. “I have learned a huge amount about myself. Nothing scares me now, “ Luke laughs. “The worst thing that could happen? It already did and I survived.”
Source:Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well, Reviews
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