T. 35--The Hallway

All four years of high school, I was involved in the speech team. Speech tournaments were held in large high school buildings, and the hallways would be filled with students in business suits. While walking to and from my rounds of competition, I would always see a number of these students talking to the walls. It was a normal part of pre-round preparation to find an empty wall and present one’s speech to the wall. This was how we practiced on competition days. You may well imagine the sight of dozens of students practicing this way. It was a little intimidating to be surrounded by competitors at every hallway, even though they were, in fact, talking to the walls. 

While in these tournaments, I imagined what it would be like to make a film about speech tournaments. That could be fun! What would it be like to film a speech competition? You could have your protagonist walk down the halls, looking left and right at the other speakers, hearing snippets of their speeches as he/she walked by. There might be a feeling of anxiety associated with this scene. What music would be playing to accompany this scene? I present to you, The Hallway. This is the melody I created in my head as I walked down hallways at speech tournaments. I thought it would sound good on a viola. So here you have the melody with some weak accompaniment. The ending of this piece is also weak because I didn’t know how to end it. But, most of this melody accurately represents what I had in my head.