Epic Fail or Miserable Failure?

Last night for the first time in probably ten years I attempted to perform a piano solo. It didn't go well, and I ended it half-way through my second song. I've learned my lesson about the need to budget enough time for rehearsal and better yet to keep rehearsing even when a performance isn't looming.

As I licked my wounds and mulled over the embarrassment of a mediocre performance, I thought to myself, "I've had an epic fail." And that got me thinking.

I grew up hearing the phrase "miserable failure" instead of "epic fail". That's an interesting evolution. The older expression is more accurate. Few things make you feel as miserable as failing. The second expression, in spite of the fact that "fail" is a verb rather than a noun has a lot going for it. For one thing it's ironic, coupling the nuance of grandiose sweeping stories with the reality of falling flat on your face.

[Alert - People too bored by literary analysis should skip to the next paragraph] I like the sound of "epic fail" a lot. "Miserable failure" has all those liquid sounds like "r" and "l" so that you are almost in a puddle by the time you've said it. "Epic" is crisp and provides nice contrast with the more bland word "fail".

Either way, what I did last night was neither epic nor miserable. It was mediocre. I knew it probably would be but I hoped for a miracle that didn't happen. That's another interesting thing about using the expression "epic fail" because we often use it for our more minor embarrassments rather than truly spectacular occasions of blowing it. I think it's probably because we fear ending like T.S. Eliot said, "Not with a bang but a whimper". We try to make our failures more interesting than they really are because we'd like to be more interesting than we really are.

The beauty is that in reality we're all just as interesting as we're supposed to be. I'm getting over myself and planning to spend more time practicing.